Mapping and Visualising Transnational (Hi)Stories » Uncategorized

Website Reference Email

K. M. Lawson — Sun, 01 Jun 2014 22:47:33 +0000

Dear Workshop Participants,

Our upcoming workshop Mapping and Visualising Transnational (Hi)Stories at the University of St Andrews is now only a week away.

Website Access

The internal workshop page is now live:

http://transnationalhistory.net/mvth/

It has been password protected. When you open the link above you will be prompted for a username and password which is:

user: mvth

pass: mvth4

The website within is where we can share our abstracts, documents, and share comments on our research and ideas for the workshop.

User accounts on this site have been created for participants. When participants are part of a group, a single account was created for a member of the group which you should feel free to use. The usernames are:

alexander (Alexander van Wickeren)

anna (Anna Ananieva)

erdem (M. Erdem Kabadayi)

georgina (Georgina Rannard)

gero (Gero Tögl and Tobias Englmeier)

martin (Martin Stark and Michael Kronenwett)

scott (Scott Schorr)

stefan (Stefan Nygård)

tom (Tom Cunningham)

hans (Hans Blomme & group)

bernhard (Bernhard Struck)

kelsey (Kelsey Jackson Williams)

If you submitted a proposal to the workshop and you or at least one member of your group are not listed here, let me know and I’ll add an account for you.

The “Login” button on the mid-right of the page will give you access to the backend. The password for all accounts is the username+mvth. For example, username konrad would have the password konradmvth. You can change this in “Profile” when you login.

Posting Your Submissions

Thank you to those of you who have emailed over the past week with your updated abstracts, ideas for custom and maker sessions, maps for discussion, and further material. Those who have already submitted these have had their information posted on the website (scrolll down). You may update/edit the way this has been presented by logging into your account, going to Posts->All Posts and pressing “Edit” under the name of the post with your information. When you are finished updating your posting press the blue “Update” button to the right.

If you have not yet submitted your updated information (see Bernhard’s earlier email below), then please consider posting them directly to our webisite:

- Updated Abstract

- Further Material

- Map or Visualisation

- Ideas for Custom and Maker Sessions

Login with you or your group’s username, and got to Posts->Add New. Then input your abstract directly into the posting. You can use the “Upload Media” button to upload images, docs, PDFs, etc. to your posting.

If you have not yet submitted your updated info please do this as soon as possible. Posting it directly to the website would be most appreciated.

Comments

Over the next few days please set aside a few minutes to post a comment on the existing postings with updated abstracts and maps.

In the comment consider including your impressions, suggestions, and what you would like to hear more about when we get a chance to meet and discuss our projects at the coming workshop.

Perhaps most importantly, please post your thoughts on suggestions that have been made for the maker and custom sessions as soon as you get a chance.

Additional Postings

If you have ideas or things you wish to share with workshop participants, please feel free to add additional postings beyond the above.

Zotero

If you have yet not done so, please pass on your Zotero username if you would like access to a group reading list where we can share suggested readings. This will go live tomorrow or the day after.

More info from Bernhard will follow.

Best,

Konrad

Dr. Konrad M. Lawson

Lecturer in Modern History

School of History

University of St. Andrews

Welcome Email

K. M. Lawson — Sun, 01 Jun 2014 12:44:41 +0000

May 10 Welcome Email for your Reference

Dear all,

Our workshop on Mapping and Visualisation at the University of St Andrews is just under a month away. As our previous communications have suggested, our gathering will diverge somewhat from the presentation plus discussion format. Some elements of the workshop are fixed, but several components will be designed with considerable input from you, the participants.

In our last email you will have found overviews of the research areas of each of our workshop participants in the attached document.

Here is an updated overview of the workshop as planned:

Sunday

Travel to St Andrews

Drinks at Russell Hotel, The Scores (corner of Murray Park)

_______

The venue will be the School of History, St Katharine’s Lodge, The Scores

Monday

Morning

9:30 Welcome and Registration

Opening Remarks

Introductions

Five Minute Lightning Talks: Research

Open Discussion on Research

Afternoon

[Custom Session ]

Skills,

Methodology, and State of the Field

Depending on Time (and Weather, this is Scotland): (Leasurely) Beach-Talk-Walk

Dinner

Tuesday

Morning

[Maker Session ]

Five

Minute Lightning Talks 2: Approaches

Afternoon

Discussion & Reflections: The Way Forward

We try to bring the workshop to a close by 3-4pm in case you have a flight from Edinburgh the same afternoon or evening.

_______

Lightning Talks

The concept of a lightning talk is very simple: you are given a short opportunity to present, with a brutally enforced time limit

– in our case five minutes. If you wish (though by no means required), you may show a single slide or image to complement your presentation.

Research -

Our first lightning talk on Monday morning will give you a chance to go beyond what is offered in the abstracts you submitted to the workshop and tell us about your research. You may decide

to focus on one of its findings, its challenges, or the importance of its broader framing. It is up to you. Use this as an opportunity to encourage fellow participants to engage with you in the open discussion that follows. The idea is really to bring something

to give and share with the group.

Approaches – Our second lightning talk

on Tuesday will give you a chance to talk more specifically about methods and approaches:

how do you use mapping, networks, or visualisations in your own research. Use this opportunity to

expand on what was submitted before the workshop (see below), or suggest new ideas or approaches that have come to mind during the course of the workshop itself.

Custom Session & Maker Session

These two sessions are designed with input from

you. The former

Custom Session is very open. How would you most like to use this time? We encourage proposals for

discussions or group activities rather than proposed formal presentations, but want your input. The

Maker Session will be an active and creative session where the object is to collaborate with immediate

effect: either through collaborative writing, the practice and use of a particular tool, or the creation of a particular visualisation.

To make an event like this work, we need your help and your input is critical to its success. For this reason we ask that all

of you SUBMIT BY JUNE 1:

1. Updated Abstract – An updated abstract of your project or research of up to 1,000 words. This should

include within it:

a. How does your current research tackle the transnational or global – and why space, maps and visualisations may (or may not) help enhancing your research and analysis.

b. How do you present the mapped or networked component of your research? In other words, how is your map or network visualised in the work you produce? What tools or software do you use to produce these visualisations or maps?

c. At what stage of progress are you at.

2. Further Material – Further material on your current research: at the very least a clear outline of

the project and its plan as it stands. Alternatively, you may share a copy of an excerpt of your work, a published article, an article draft, a visualisation or map, an online resource created, or some other outcome of the research.

3. Map or Visualisation – please share with us a map or visualisation (image file, link, or at the very

least a reference) that you have come across either directly related to your research, or elsewhere, which you think communicates an idea or a research finding effectively.

4.Zotero Username -

If you already have an account on

Zotero.org, the open source citation management system, then please send us your username (Konrad:

kml8@st-andrews.ac.uk). If you do not have a free

account there, we encourage you to create one. We will create a group reading list on Zotero and use it to share and exchange some reading in the area of mapping, networks, and visualisations.

5. Ideas for Custom Session and Maker Session

In the form of a paragraph or two tell us one or two ideas of how you would like to make use of the

Custom Session and the

Maker Session. In the former case, would you like a discussion set up on a particular topic? Would

you like to engage in an activity? In the latter case, what do you imagine to be the most productive way to have a short (1.5-2 hours) intense collaborative “maker” experience where the object is to create and experiment?

6. Skills

- Do you have any particular skills or familiarity with a particular software tool or approach that you use and would be willing to share in the afternoon skills session (as you will see

in the abstracts, Stark and Kornewett have already offered a demonstration of VennMaker – at this time we are asking if there are others also willing to share). This can be a short 15 or 30 minute presentation to demonstrate its use, talk about ways to acquire

the skills needed, or a tutorial.

On May 30, we will have up and running a WordPress software based website for everyone to access for use during the workshop

(and preserved afterwards). This will be password protected. A username and password will be issued to everyone (likely the same as your zotero username) to access the backend. You can submit the above components by email (which we can then post on the internal

wordpress installation), but for those of you comfortable with it, we ask you to submit the above directly within the WordPress interface itself (more details on May 30).

From 1 June to 8 June

After everyone has submitted this material we ask that everyone choose 2 or 3 of the other submitted abstracts (all which will be viewable within the password protected WordPress installation) and write a paragraph or two of comments, questions, and suggestions in response (through the comments feature). More details on this 30 May.

After 10 June

After 10 June, we will add a page to the St Andrews Institute of Transnational History that will have a public collection of outputs from the workshop. The exact nature and extent of this (a short blog post, a visualisation, the product of the maker session, a collaborative written piece, etc.) will be explored at the event itself.

We are aware that this is a slightly different and deliberately open format that takes some ideas from the “unconference” concept as practiced by THATCamps (see their webpage).

Please do not hesitate to get in touch with me should you have any questions on the format. Kelsey will remain the main contact for the more practical issues including travel and accommodation.

Once we have everything online by 1 June and have received your potential inputs we will be in touch with a an updated schedule and precise venue.

Best wishes, also on behalf of Konrad and Kelsey,

Bernhard

Original CFP

K. M. Lawson — Sun, 01 Jun 2014 06:08:12 +0000

Call for Proposals: Mapping and Visualising Transnational (Hi)Stories. Connecting History, Space and Digital Tools

We are delighted to announce a workshop to be held here at St Andrews in June, 2014. It will combine short presentations on papers, collaborative writing groups to further develop submitted papers as well as a morning of sessions that introduce specific skills and approaches to spatial history. Please find more details below.

Centre for Transnational History in collaboration with GRAINES
Mapping and Visualising Transnational (Hi)Stories. Connecting History, Space and Digital Tools

Venue: 8-10 June 2014, School of History, St Andrews
Convenors: Bernhard Struck, Konrad Lawson
Submission date for papers and workshop proposals: 10 January 2014

Download Call for Proposals

Idea and Rationale

• 1 MARRYING SPATIAL AND TRANSNATIONAL HISTORY
• 2 LEARNING TRANSNATIONAL TOOLS AND DIGITAL SKILLS

Transnational history has been broadly defined as being interested in connections across borders as well as in flows of goods, people, ideas across, through and above nations. As a perspective or way of seeing transnational history has been characterised as being primarily concerned with people as actors that create webs of connections as well as circulations, honeycombs and nodes of interaction across borders.

Such definitions raise questions of space and scale that this workshop seeks to address. What is more it raises the, admittedly but deliberately, broad questions:

● Where is transnational history?
● How to map and visualise transnational (hi)stories, the social and cultural spaces in which transnational actors and objects act and which are created by transnational actors and connections?
● Which maps would be needed in order to write transnational (hi)stories that will enhance our understanding of cross-border movements and flows?
● Could transnational and global history as well as spatial history on the one hand, technology and digital humanities on the other speak more fruitfully to one another?

The emphasis on mapping and visualisation points towards a more technical aspect that we seek to address during the workshop. It stems, however, from two observations. First, more programmatic texts on transnational, but also on global history, have emphasised (explicitly or implicitly) the search for spatial alternativeswith but beyond the nation-state. The reference to space here and for the workshop is a deliberately open one. Within the context of transnational and global history, however, the distinction between ‘spatial practice’, ‘representations of space’ and ‘representational space’ made by Henri Lefebvre seems particularly relevant to us. Second, despite a growing number of excellent case studies and impressive monographs or synthesis in the vein of transnational and global perspectives, maps and visualisations of these (hi)stories and the spaces in which transnational history takes places or that are created by transnational flows and connections are strikingly abstract.

The workshop seeks to address the questions above on how to spatialise and, consequently, how to map and visualise transnational histories and the flows and connections it is interested in. With these challenges and problems on space and scale in mind, the workshop seeks to combine transnational and global history with the simultaneous (re)emergence of space and spatial issues since the early 1990s. We invite papers and workshop proposals in the, again, deliberately broad and open perspective of transnational history.

(UN)ORGANIZATION AND CONNECTION – FORMS AND FORMAT(S)

The workshop will be explicitly experimental. What we are looking for is the willingness to explore and share thoughts, tools and techniques in order to develop the links between transnational and spatial history further. While the individual papers presented are historical we seek to explore ways of visualising and mapping flows and connections by collaborating across disciplines.

The event will be organised as a workshop combining presentations and feedback sessions on submitted papers with a workshop-like event, which introduces a specific skill or approach to mapping and the study of spatial history. Applicants may either submit a paper or may apply to coordinate one of the informal training workshops with a focus on technology, software and skills .

Following the CFP and selection of topics and participants, the preparation of the meeting will start through a virtual platform, establishing a collective reading group and a shared community space in the form of a pre-meeting reading repository and a collaboratively authored blog in order to build up a workflow and facilitate the exchange of ideas. Prior to the actual meeting in St Andrews papers, or workshop preparatory materials will be circulated (two weeks before meeting).

During the meeting the focus will be on brief presentations, cross-comments in large plenum with intervals of breaking up into small-groups as well as writing groups with the clear view of developing the papers further with a clear view of different forms of dissemination and publication. The writing groups will work closely and directly from pre-circulated texts that are the basis of the brief presentations, and offer an opportunity to move from general feedback to more direct contributions to the writing revision process in a small and more comfortable group setting.

As an interdisciplinary workshop, different participants bring different skill sets. We will set aside one morning of the workshop to offer an opportunity for volunteer participants to share a specific approach, skill, or technique that can be useful in writing spatial history, which might include technical skills such as providing an introduction to or specific applications of GIS, social network analysis or share the experience of historians who have devised other particular ways to tackle the specific challenges of space and scale that they faced in research and writing in this area.

While independent academic essays are the major research outcome, it is also hoped that the writing groups will offer an opportunity to experiment with more direct collaborative writing amongst group members building either upon initial ideas shared on the collaborative blog for the workshop or from another pre-shared list of ideas amongst participants with shared interests. These might take the form of getting the initial outline and key arguments for a full article, or the creation of shorter pieces focusing on providing a collective essay with recommendations on how to meet the specific challenges of transnational history that addresses flows and connections at various scales.

We invite the submission for both papers and workshops by 10 January 2014 Please send your proposal (max 250 words) and a brief biographical note (max 100 words) to Bernhard Struck at bs50@st-andrews.ac.uk

Note: Proposals for workshops should include

1) a list of learning outcomes
2) indicate whether they are appropriate for 60, 90, or 120 minutes, and
3) If they are interactive, what software and prerequisite skill requirements there are for participation.

There is no fee for the workshop. The Centre for Transnational History will cover accommodation expenses for the duration of the event. Travel expenses need to be covered by the home institution.

For further information see

grainesnetwork.com
standrewstransnational.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk