Bringing geospatial researchers a little closer together

The work of Carleton’s Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre (GCRC) is being recognized once again as it was chosen to represent Canada as one of the small group participants in the upcoming U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Funded Workshop, entitled Visualizing the Past: Tools and Techniques for Understanding Historical Processes.

The workshop will bring 10-20 participants from around the world to address the significant obstacles currently preventing scholars from sharing geospatial data with one another and taking advantage of the potential of visualization techniques. Scholars will work together in close collaboration, discuss their research and make plans for the future. “The area and use of new technology has been primarily for the sciences, to a lesser extent the social sciences, and to an even lesser extent the humanities,” explains Fraser Taylor, Distinguished Research Professor and director of the GCRC. “The conference is an opportunity to try and bring history and the humanities more into the digital multimedia world.”

The selection committee was highly impressed with the proposal submitted by Taylor and five other colleagues at the GCRC. The proposal, entitled The Role of Cybercartography in Exploring, Visualizing and Preserving the Past, uses two examples to illustrate the potential of cybercartography. The first is the Kitikmeot Place Names Atlas which was developed in cooperation with the Inuit communities around Cambridge Bay in Nunavut to capture and preserve oral histories and narratives. The second example is the prototype “Living” Cybercartographic Atlas of Indigenous Perspectives and Knowledge of the Great Lakes Region. An important part of this Atlas is a module of the treaty relationships process over time between the Anishinaabe peoples and various other stakeholders including various governments in Canada.

“Our selection shows the recognition and value of the research being conducted here at Carleton,” saysTaylor, who was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada late last year for his innovative and ground-breaking work in the fields of cartography and geography.

Peter Pulsifer, post-doctoral fellow in the Centre and one of the proposal’s co-authors, will attend the workshop which takes place from Feb. 20-21, 2009 at the University of Richmond, in Virginia.