As Director and Associate Director of the new Institute for Spatial History Innovation (ISHI), we are delighted to share our first message and to kick off our inaugural term!
ISHI is an interdisciplinary center in the Pitt Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences with the goal of researching, creating, linking, publishing, and disseminating information about global places, regions, and spatial networks where people have made meaning throughout time. At the heart of our mission is the goal of creating a platform for connection and storytelling that allows people to share narratives rooted in place. We embrace the urgency of the present, when the right to survive, belong, inhabit, and define place is under attack around the world.
As we launch our first semester, we wish to introduce the team guiding this vision: Professor Ruth Mostern is the inaugural director of ISHI, and Dr. Alexandra Straub serves as ISHI’s Associate Director and Research Associate. ISHI collaborates with Dr. Stephen Gadd, Technical Director and Lead Developer of the World Historical Gazetteer (WHG). Jiating Liu, a graduate student in the Department of History, joins ISHI as a Graduate Student Assistant for the academic year. We also look forward to welcoming a new Research Associate and Digital Data Manager later this fall.
To guide our work and advance historical spatial knowledge, ISHI will organize its initiatives around four core pillars:
- Developing and maintaining infrastructure to link and integrate information about historical geography. The flagship project of ISHI is the World Historical Gazetteer (WHG), a key piece of infrastructure in digital spatial history. The World Historical Gazetteer is a platform for linking records about historical places, allowing people to make spatial connections across time and language. This year, WHG is undergoing a server migration that will provide greater system stability and allow WHG to scale effectively to accommodate future data growth.
- Publishing structured data and scholarship about global historical geography. ISHI recently published a Historical Gazetteer of Central Asia on the WHG platform. The dataset publication illustrates how various primary and secondary sources have defined the region of Central Asia over time. The project was completed with support from the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (REEES). Learn more about the project here! Throughout the year, ISHI will continue to publish structured data on the WHG, including but not limited to China, including data from Ruth Mostern’s Yellow River Project, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. We are also starting a Pittsburgh Spatial History working group.
- Promoting digital justice and reparation in the spatial history domain. Over the summer, ISHI Director Ruth Mostern and Associate Director Ali Straub participated in a two-day workshop at the National Archives in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on the topic of ethics and justice in digital history titled "Workshop Ética e Justiça nas Humanidades Digitais." Read more about the workshop here! ISHI will continue to actively contribute to and expand conversations about digital justice in the context of spatial history in conversation with local partners like the Responsible Data Science (RDS) at Pitt and the wider global community.
- Educating scholars and teachers about spatial history methodologies. We believe that pedagogy focused on spatial and place-based histories can enhance the teaching of history. This semester, ISHI will host a hands-on workshop for K–12 educators, introducing them to the World Historical Gazetteer (WHG) and the Historical Gazetteer of Central Asia Place Collection. ISHI also partners with the Global Studies in the Global Appalachia Learning Alliance and will cosponsor a reading group on the topic of “Place and Placemaking in Global Appalachia.”
Please contact us at ISHI@pitt.edu if you would like to discuss a collaboration with ISHI; and stay tuned for updates on upcoming events, workshops, and featured projects. We look forward to building a vibrant community of practice with you in this exciting new chapter!