Spatial Humanities Works-in-Progress Seminar
The Spatial Humanities Works-in-Progress Seminar is designed as a collaborative forum for sharing works-in-progress and offering constructive feedback and support for projects still in development.
We invite faculty and graduate students from any discipline to workshop a draft of a current project that engages with spatial humanities or the history of space and place in some way. This might include projects that use maps or spatial data, analyze landscapes or regions, foreground place-based archives, or otherwise treat space and place as central to their questions. Each session will consist of an hour-long discussion which may include pre-circulated work in the form of a paper, outline, website, map, dataset, syllabus, or other creative work on which you would like feedback. Participants will also have the opportunity to explore how to articulate spatial questions more explicitly and how to incorporate appropriate spatial technologies into their work.
Please complete this form to join the group! All events will take place in 3500 Posvar Hall from 2:00 PM–3:15 PM.
Fall 2026 Schedule
Wednesday, September 9: Anjali Vats (School of Law) will present on “Rhubarb Nationalism,” an interdisciplinary study of how the creation of a market for Yorkshire rhubarb has transformed the economic and cultural landscape of a predominantly white, working-class region in northern England.
Wednesday, October 7: Runxiao Zhu (University Library System) will present on enhancements to the interactive map interface of Pitt’s Contemporary Chinese Village Gazetteer Data, a collection of rare first-hand datasets that serves as a critical access point to primary research materials on contemporary China.
Wednesday, October 21: Anika Walke (CMU, History) will present a chapter from her book manuscript examining the spatial legacies and memorial landscapes of the Holocaust and World War II in Belarus.
Wednesday, November 4: James Pickett (History) will share a project about mapping the Islamic World that interrogates what we talk about when we talk about the Islamic world.
Wednesday, November 11: Susan Lucas (Urban Studies) will present on the history and meaning of vacant land to residents of Swissvale Borough and how this knowledge might inform future reuse strategies.
Wednesday, December 9: Mina Rajagopalan (History of Art & Architecture) will share a project that explores the maps and landscapes of early modern Bombay through the story of Catherine Braganza.