Allard Pierson fellowship for cartography

The Allard Pierson collection of maps and atlases is among the largest in the world. The Allard Pierson preserves approximately 150,000 loose maps, around 6,000 atlases and various globes. Many hundreds of maps are classified as unique or very rare. An important part of the collection is the Library and Map Collection of the Royal Dutch Geographic Society (Koninklijk Nederlands Aardrijkskundig Genootschap – KNAG). The collection broadly reflects the history of Western, specifically Dutch, cartography up to the present day. Maps produced in seventeenth-century Amsterdam – then, from a Western perspective, the world’s leading centre of map production – are exceptionally well represented. The collection includes renowned early modern cartographers such as Blaeu, Janssonius and De Wit, but also thousands of nineteenth-century maps and atlases with a nationalistic or colonial context, collected by the Royal Dutch Geographic Society.

The Allard Pierson Fellowship for Cartography 2027 is intended for research based on digital derivatives of the heritage collections in cartography and geography. Digitised maps and digital applications are becoming available in growing numbers, and the Allard Pierson wishes to support innovative and critical academic research in this field. 

Suggestions for research:

• Digital historical 3D or 4D reconstructions based on digitised heritage maps from the Allard Pierson collection
• Research making use of OCR or AI-based image recognition of digitised maps from the Allard Pierson collection
• Research based on geospatial data, GIS applications and digitised heritage maps from the Allard Pierson collection
• Research based on Linked Open Data, including the linking of digital heritage to digitised maps from the Allard Pierson collection, or digital forms of “deep mapping”
• Historical or ethnographic research that will help the Allard Pierson to add multivocality and diversity to the (LOD) metadata
• Research into digitised heritage maps from the Allard Pierson collection based on Critical Data Studies, decolonial data and/or critical cartography
• Research into the “ethics of care” in relation to the open-access sharing of harmful or sensitive digitised cartographic heritage from the Allard Pierson collection
• Artistic research based on digitised heritage maps from the Allard Pierson collection
• Or another research project based on digital applications and digitised heritage maps from the Allard Pierson collection 

Searching the collection
The collections of the Allard Pierson are accessible and searchable online through several databases and catalogues. More information about the collections can be found here. The search portal is a useful tool for accessing various catalogues, image databases, general descriptions of collections and inventories. Loose maps and atlases are well described and can be retrieved using the UvA catalogue and the digital collection.

Questions
Jansonius Curator Margriet Hoogvliet can be contacted for questions about the collection.  Fellowship programme coordinator Anna de Wilde (a.e.dewilde@uva.nl) can be contacted for questions about the application process.

Guidelines

Read more about the guidelines and application process here.