LIVINGMAPS: Joe Gerlach on 'Vernacular Cartographies'

*NOTICE: Due to the UCU national strike action on 25 and 26 May, this event will no longer go ahead as planned. We will aim to reschedule in the new academic year (starting in September 2016). If you purchased a ticket, you can claim a refund from the point of sale.*

Of late, much has been made of the politics of maps - to the extent that reiterating the 'power' of maps has become something of a truism, one that threatens, ironically, the political vibrancy of cartography. Responding to this threat, the lecture examines another way of thinking about the nature and ethics of mapping through the concept of 'vernacular mapping'. In doing so, the lecture points to a series of recent cartographic events in which the geopolitics of mapping is refigured less as a 'technology of representation and capture', and more as a 'technology of anticipation'; no matter whether it is used in the fields of participatory cartography, mental health practice or political struggle.

Lecture by Joe Gerlach (University of Oxford), and discussion led by Les Back (Goldsmiths, University of London) as the second in a series of collaborations on shape shifiting urban spaces between LIVINGMAPS and UCL Urban Laboratory.

Joe is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford. Joe has a long-standing research interest in the nature and geopolitics of mapping, specifically in so-called 'non-representational' understandings of cartography. His fieldwork has included participating in OpenStreetMap and other collaborative cartographies in the UK, USA and Andean Latin America.

Les is Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths College and the author of many books including Urban Multiculture and The Art of Listening.

Book tickets

• Entry: £10.00
• Concessions: £7.00

Image: Thomas Hirschhorn's 'Spinoza Map' (2007)