The Center is pleased to co-sponsor The Art of Storytelling, a half-day conference on data visualization convened by the Columbia University Libraries. “We are almost two decades into the 21st Century and living in a dense forest of information. Making our way through means filtering and processing vast quantities of tangled and interconnected data, and in order to do this successfully, we must be able to see the information in meaningful ways, to be understood and shared with others. Ultimately, we must do what we've done for millennia -- we must tell stories.”

Urban Floods: Interdisciplinary Perspectives is a unique conference that seeks to bridge the gap between physical scientists – who draw on physical observations, quantitative data analysis, computer simulation, and visualization – and social scientists and humanists who focus on participant observation, case studies, and other interpretive methods. April 12-13, 2018.

Ways of Knowing Cities is a one-day conference which brings together leading scholars and practitioners from across multiple disciplines to consider the role that technologies have played in changing how urban spaces and social life are structured and understood – both historically and in the present moment.

A call for applications. The Center for Spatial Research and the Dean of Humanities invite interested Columbia University faculty and advanced graduate students to participate in Mapping for the Urban Humanities: A Summer Institute. During the two-week Mellon-funded institute participants will learn key skills in mapping, data visualization, and data collection that they can incorporate into their research and teaching. Space is limited. Interested faculty and PhD candidates are encouraged to apply by Friday, January 26, 2018.

Points Unknown, a new collaboration between the Center for Spatial Research, Brown Institute and Faculty from the Journalism School, launched a five-week course module this week for students at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

The Center for Spatial Research will be offering a workshop series this fall designed to give a basic introduction to core concepts and methods for work with geographic information systems in the urban humanities. The hands-on workshop series aims to contribute to existing campus-wide GIS resources, and is thus tailored to students doing coursework and research in the urban humanities with no prior GIS experience. It is open to students from all schools at Columbia University.

Adam Greenfield discusses his new book, Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life, in conversation with Laura Kurgan. September 15, 2017, 1:00pm Ware Lounge, Avery Hall. Everywhere we turn, our everyday experience of the world is being transfigured by the advent of startling new technologies. But at what cost? In this urgent and revelatory excavation of the Information Age, leading technology thinker Adam Greenfield forces us to rethink our relationship with the networked objects, services and spaces that define our lives, as well as the Silicon Valley consensus that is determining the shape of our future.

Please join us this spring for “Conflict Urbanism: Language Justice.” This public lecture series aims to explore the role of language in structuring cities, bringing together speakers to address the ways that urban spaces and their digital traces are physically shaped by linguistic diversity, and to examine the results of languages coming into contact and conflict.

Michelle McSweeney and Dare Brawley will offer two introductory GIS workshops as part of this year’s New York City Digital Humanities Week. NYCDH Week offers students, faculty, librarians, and researchers the opportunity to take advantage of workshops in the digital humanities offered at universities across the city. All workshops are free and open to the public.

On October 20, 2016 Laura Kurgan spoke about the Conflict Urbanism: Aleppo project as part of SUPERHUMANITY TALKS, a panel event at the 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial presented by e-flux Architecture. 

Laura Kurgan spoke about the Center for Spatial Research’s work on Conflict Urbanism Aleppo in relation to e-flux’s provocation: