"Maps as Data"
Virtual talk by Dr. Katherine McDonough (Lancaster University) at Bucknell University (March 20, 2024).

Abstract: Instead of principally thinking of maps as the outcome of digital humanities research, Machine Learning opens the door to investigating very large collections of maps as input. On both the “Living with Machines” and Machines Reading Maps projects, I have worked with a range of library partners to create datasets inferred from the content of these collections. This talk explores the design of our data creation methods (in particular our software library MapReader), how open and reproducible digital research can support humanistic inquiry, and why these approaches allow us to not only understand, but analyze, maps in new ways.

Speaker Bio: Dr. Katie McDonough. McDonough is a Lecturer in Digital Humanities at Lancaster University, and recently a member of Living with Machines and UK PI of Machines Reading Maps. She works at the intersection of social and intellectual history and the history of science and technology. She uses computational methods to translate large collections of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European texts and images, maps in particular, into data that historians can interpret. Her current projects explore Enlightenment discourses of geographic knowledge, the politics of highway construction in rural France, and the impact of railway infrastructure on nineteenth-century British communities.