The shared aim of all these multidisciplinary research projects is as much to do with exploring the material and imagined spaces, places and landscapes of the Middle Ages, as it is with engaging with emergent digital technologies, such as web-mapping, and Geographical Information Systems (GIS), to help understand how past and present intersect and overlap.

As an Institute Fellow, I shall use Mutable mappings and spatial humanities: negotiating cartographic cultures in a digital world as a vehicle for bringing together researchers and practitioners across the humanities, both within and beyond Ireland and the UK, linking HEIs and non-HEIs. To do so my principal role in the Institute in 2013 is to establish new collaborations and forge stronger existing links between academics and heritage professionals interested in digital technologies and their application in broadening access to and engagement with ‘the past’, particularly through the use of spatial technologies and digital mapping. To this end, I shall be developing new research collaborations in three particular areas; one focusing on First World War landscapes of the Western Front using digitized trench maps; a second on ‘layering time’ visualizing and navigating medieval urban landscapes using multimedia; and a third on ‘urban voices’ digitally mapping out oral histories recounting experiences of living in UK cities in the late-twentieth century.

For more information about my past and current research interests please see the details at: http://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/gap/Staff/AcademicStaff/DrKeithLilley/ExtendedInformation/ 

If you wish to discuss with me some aspect of the areas of research that I shall be focusing on as a Fellow of the Institute please contact me at: k.lilley@qub.ac.uk