Please Note: The tutorials developed for this website were designed for QGIS 2.x. QGIS is now available with a newer 3.x version and some tutorials may not be entirely accurate. Until these tutorials can be updated, a series of YouTube video tutorials have been created that is updated to the newer version of QGIS and are available here: QGIS 3.x Tutorial Playlist – Konrad M. Lawson, July, 2021.

These tutorials aim to present mapping skills that we believe historians could need in their research. Here at the Institute for Transnational and Spatial History we think that the new historiographical approaches regarding the study of space, networks and transnational interactions will spur the need for a more digital approach to our research.

Whether you are examining transatlantic relationships in the 18th century, Victorian railways, absinthe networks during the Belle Époque, the evolution of the borders of Poland, or the history of London’s council houses, QGIS can enhance. This website will show how to install basic layers (e.g. coastlines, national borders, rivers, mountains…) before getting started. It will then offer multiple tutorials: how to depict certain points, how to draw routes, how to integrate a map that you scanned and how to add digital elements to it, but also how to collect information from your mapping and use it for your research.

Jordan Girardin

Jordan Girardin is the author of the tutorials you are about to discover, along with Dr Konrad Lawson who supervised this project. Jordan is a PhD candidate within the School of History and the Institute for Transnational & Spatial History at St Andrews. His PhD project analyses Western European travellers in the Alps between the 1750s and the 1830s. Always enthusiastic about the study of travel, transport and urban networks, Jordan is intending to use mapping and other Digital Humanities tools to expand the scope of his research projects. You can read more about what Jordan is up to on his website and on Twitter.