What is where? The role of map representations and mapping practices in advancing scholarship

Abstract

This chapter provides a general introduction to the Mapping Across Academia volume and gives some context regarding the development of cartography. We consider how the emergence of the impulse to map space had profoundly shaped how people understand the world around them and perform a wide array of spatial practices. Following on from this we discuss more contemporary developments in terms of the wholesale computerisation of cartography in the second half of the twentieth and on-going changes in mapping practices through the enrolment of digital technologies. The chapter switches track to think about the significance of the development of visual displays of intellectual ideas using spatial approaches and the recent growth in efforts to map out the structures of scientific knowledge.