From Chester… to Lancaster… to the world!
The innovative GIS-based mapping work carried out by the project team is getting noticed by others in the fields of digital humanities and historical cartography.
Keith Lilley has been asked to contribute to an event being held at the University of Lancaster in February on the theme of Landscapes, memories and cultural practices: A GIS/GPS digital heritage mapping network, sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and British Telecom, and organised by Dr Ian Gregory. Of the event, Ian says the “aim is to bring people with humanities GIS content together with technical experts so that we can work towards developing systems that will provide location-specific content to users in the field”. This discussion will have a bearing on future work we have in mind developing further the existing Chester online resource.
Shortly after the Lancaster meeting, Keith is then off to the University of Padua in Italy at the invitation of Alexandra Chavarria, an archaeologist researcher in Padua who is working alongside Professor Gian Pietro Brogiol on a project called Architettura Residenziale Medievale a Padova (further details of which are accessible here). This is quite similar in nature to Mapping Medieval Chester and through this exchange we shall share experiences of mapping medieval cities using GIS and look to future potential collaborative work that builds upon both the Padua and Chester projects.
All in all, as we had hoped, Mapping Medieval Chester is still very much alive as a project, and will continue to spawn new initiatives and influence future research agendas in a wide range of fields.