This event launches ‘English Places’: the exciting new app from the Victoria County History, which puts authoritative histories of places across England at your fingertips, whether you’re browsing at home or out and about exploring. Please join us to celebrate the launch, and for our broader discussion of digital mapping projects, place and public history. The launch will be introduced by Catherine Clarke, Professor in the History of People, Place and Community, IHR and will follow a panel session which will discuss digital mapping platforms in academic and public history contexts.
Chair: Matt Bristow (IHR/Historic England)Panel:Peter Insole (Principal Historic Environment Office, Know Your Place Bristol)
Sarah Jones (Head of Geomatics, Museum of London Archaeology)
Seif El Rashidi (Project Manager, Layers of London, IHR)
Professor Andrew McCrae (University of Exeter, Co-Director Places of Poetry)
The challenge for digital mapping platforms like Layers of London and Know Your Place, and for national projects which focus on the local, such as the Victoria County History, is to move beyond the immediate locality towards crowd sourced national histories. The potential for digital mapping platforms to be ‘franchised’, allowing expansion beyond the geographical and organisational boundaries of an individual project, opens up exciting possibilities for the creation of interconnected, multi-layered resources which combine to speak to our collective national history. How can academics, community groups and members of the public harness the potential of digital mapping platforms to expand the horizons of our histories from the local to the national?
Location: The Court Room, First Floor, Senate House, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU