This series of lectures invites a critical and fresh view on mapping, its role in the global circulation of knowledge, influence on state sovereignty and royal authority, colonialism, imperialism, national identities throughout history.
Berlin is an apt place for this topic. It has historically been a meeting point of mapping practices from all over the world. The city played a key role in the genesis of the history of cartography as a distinct branch of the history of science. It hosts a huge variety of the material culture of mapping across many institutions that illustrate how a map is strongly conditioned by space and time in which it was created (historical context), by people who created it (mapmakers), and by the audience and purpose for which it was intended (users). Map is, therefore, understood as a complex social construct representing a power of knowledge.
Germany is now a major repository of mapping efforts through history, making Berlin a perfect setting for this lecture series.
The lecture series is jointly organised by Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte and Einstein Center Chronoi.
To be continued (Part II) from January 2025 onwards.
THE LECTURE SERIES
| 11 November 2024, 6 p.m. | Keynote lecture | Maps and Mapping in Global Cultural Perspectives: Temporality in Map History |
| 5 December 2024, 6 p.m. | Lecture with Dialogue | Visualising Time-Space in East Asia: Mapping ‘Round Heavens & Square Earth’ from Ancient Rotating Devices to Late Modern Commercial Maps |
| 19 December 2024, 6 p.m. | Lecture with Dialogue | Transcultural Cartographies: The Japanese Buddhist World Map and the Birth of Asian Studies in Europe |