A core tenet of ISHI is the cultivation of a scholarly network that promotes education and critical engagement with spatial history methodologies across disciplines. ISHI advances this mission by convening working groups, hosting events, and engaging in international networks. Scroll down to learn more about how ISHI is cultivating community and networks around the spatial humanities.
The Pittsburgh Spatial History Working Group is a collaborative community of scholars, practitioners, and enthusiasts dedicated to exploring the intersections of spatial history, geography, and place-based studies within the Pittsburgh region. Through workshops, seminars, mapping projects, opportunities for students, and public engagement, we aim to deepen understanding of Pittsburgh’s spatial history, whether through historical mapping, geographic information systems (GIS), studying urban planning, tracking environmental change, documenting struggles over dwelling and occupying space, or writing narratives about cultural landscapes.
The first meeting will be held in January, 2026 and will be an opportunity to share ideas, set goals, and discuss upcoming projects. To express interest in this working group, please fill out this Google Form.
The Place, Space, and Critical Geography Reading Group brings together faculty and students interested in theories, methods, and case studies related to place, space, and critical geography, with a focus on how physical and social landscapes both shape and are shaped by power relations, identities, and social struggles.
The goals of the reading group are to build and support a collaborative community at Pitt around the critical study of place, space, and geography; and to compile a collective bibliography of key texts that engage with these themes, from disciplines including history, anthropology, art and architectural history, sociology, urban studies, geography, and related fields.
The Place, Space, and Critical Geography Reading Group will hold its first meeting on January 22, 2026. Write to ISHI@pitt.edu for more information.
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. To share something you are working on or to express interest in participating in these discussions, please email ISHI@pitt.edu.
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.
To share something you are working on or to express interest in participating in these discussions, please email ISHI@pitt.edu.
Spring 2026 Schedule
February 5, 2:30-3:45 - Stephanie Love (Anthropology) will share a chapter from the forthcoming book project Streets of a Million Martyrs: Everyday Poetics and Politics in Urban Algeria.
February 19, 2:30PM-3:45PM - Keila Grinberg (History, Center for Latin American Studies) will introduce a new version of her project, Passados Presentes, for group discussion.
March 26, 2:30PM-3:45PM - Liz Arkush (Anthropology) will present a book chapter-in-progress, tentatively titled “Those who most pursued their freedom”: Archaeological and ethnohistoric perspectives on Colla resistance to Inca rule.
April 9, 2:30PM - 3:45 PM - Matthew Burton (School of Computing and Information) will present his Watershed Consciousness Project.
April 16, 2:30PM - 3:45 PM - Kirk Savage (History of Art and Architecture) and Elizabeth Thomas (author) will present on a place-based project relating to the Cherokees in western North Carolina
To participate in these discussions, please email ISHI@pitt.edu.