Spatial Data: the Ole Faithful of Digital Humanities Projects

27 September 2026

This week we turned our attention in class towards a specific type of data: spatial data. I was already incredibly familiar with spatial data and its myriad of uses in the humanities because I have a minor in geographic information systems (GIS) from undergrad. I also currently work as a library data consultant for the Digital Research Services department at UNC Library, so I am more than familiar with spatial data platforms like ArcGIS Pro, QGIS (my beloved!), and ArcGIS Online. With this said, I love working with spatial data and I think it’s an excellent tool to be applied in the humanities.

One of the articles we read this was Beatrice Joyeaux-Prunel’s Digital Humanities for a Spatial, Global, and Social History of Art (2020)¹. Joyeaux-Prunel is professor and the chair of Digital Humanities at the University of Geneva. She has worked on and managed numerous digital projects, including the Artlas Project, Postdigital, and VISUAL CONTAGIONS. Her 2020 article focuses on the development of cartographic digital humanities projects as she argues for the use of spatial data in art history.

My favorite part of Joyeaux-Prunel’s article–and the part I find to be most compelling–is her claim that “mapping is a research process rather than an outcome”². I find that too many digital tools in the digital humanities focus more on presenting the outcome of a research process than actually embedding themselves in that research process. While I am a strong believer in increased accessibility for academic research–and digital tools contribute to that increased accessibility greatly–Joyeaux Prunel argues that spatial data should be incorporated as a part of the art historical research process, not only as a product of it.

Take Google Maps and StoryMaps JS as an example of part versus product. As a part of this week’s class, we were introduced to the two spatial mapping platforms commonly used in humanities projects. I found that both of these platforms were fairly easy to use and designed for beginners working with spatial data. All you need to start a map in Google My Maps and StoryMaps JS is a known location–either one that is already marked on Google Maps (StoryMaps JS is based on the same satellite information used by Google Maps) or the coordinates of a particular point.

I elected to use coordinates for my two test maps since I was working with locations that no longer exist for the most part. My two test maps (both embedded below) include the same four locations around the city of Naples, Italy that pertain to my current master’s thesis project. I am working on paintings of Mount Vesuvius in eruption from the late eighteenth-century by French painter Pierre-Jacques Volaire. Volaire’s work can be roughly categorized into three-to-four groups based on the eruption they are based on and the location they depict Vesuvius from. These four locations are as follows: the Ponte della Maddalena (since destroyed), the Atrio del Cavallo, the Castel dell’Ovo, and the Strada della Marinella in the Piazza al Ponte della Maddalena (since destroyed).

Two of these four locations no longer exist in the modern era and were located via a map of Naples published by Niccolò Carletti (1723-1796) in Mappa Topografica della Città di Napoli e de’ suoi Contorni (1776). The map is uploaded to the Davis Rumsey Map Collection and georeferenced via crowdsourcing³, so it was easy to match the original location of the Ponte della Maddalena to the now aptly-named Via Ponte della Maddalena. From there I collected the coordinates of the now-destroyed bridge and adjoining piazza from Google Maps (not to be confused with the Google My Maps I was creating at this time).

Link to Google My Maps: here-> (embedded below)
Link to StoryMap: here-> (embedded below)

Having now used both spatial mapping platforms to perform the same function, I find that I prefer Google My Maps to StoryMapsJS. I think StoryMapsJS are a great way to tell a story using spatial data, especially to a more public audience that may not be familiar with humanities fields or spatial data. That said, I am more interested in using spatial data for analysis purposes, which StoryMapsJS just isn’t designed for. For my thesis project, I am working to recreate the different vantage points of Vesuvius in eruption, so I need a data platform that allows for more data manipulation than visualization.

While an excellent tool in communication, StoryMapsJS is not designed to be integrated into the research process. Its design lacks the capacity for deeper analysis beyond visualization. StoryMapsJS JS is meant to show research spatially, not be an active part of it. Google My Maps on the other hand is positioned slightly better to serve as an active part of the research analysis process. Unlike StoryMapsJS, users in Google My Maps can search for locations using satellite imagery and click on the map to pull up specific coordinates. This is better suited for locations that aren’t marked on traditional Google Maps or those that no longer exist, like the Ponte della Maddalena. StoryMapsJS allows users to place points using coordinates, but those coordinates have to be sourced from another location outside of the platform.

All this said, Google My Maps still pales in comparison to actual spatial data software programs like ArcGIS Pro and QGIS for spatial analysis. A user can place points in Google My Maps to visually see spatial information, but there is little other analysis that can be done beyond that. One needs to make the jump to another platform for more in-depth analysis, which requires significant training and oftentimes expensive licenses⁴. ArcGIS Online is a common middle-ground for users looking for more analytical power than Google My Maps, but don’t need something as powerful as ArcGIS Pro or QGIS.

Beatrice Joyeux-Prunel, “Digital Humanities for a Spatial, Global, and Social History of Art,” The Routledge Companion, pp. 88-108. ↩︎
Joyeaux-Prunel (2020): 94. ↩︎
Pignatelli, Giovanni. Mappa Topografica della Città di Napoli e de’ suoi Contorni. Napoli, 1775. 1:4000. https://davidrumsey.oldmapsonline.org/maps/6498aba9-17b7-53a8-98bb-adc26a2fa9ef/view. ↩︎
ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Online are both owned by ESRI and required a license. UNC users get free access to ESRI products through their university accounts. A personal license is currently $100/year USD. QGIS is open-source and free to download for any user. ↩︎

Comments

4 responses to “Spatial Data: the Ole Faithful of Digital Humanities Projects”

September 28, 2026

Caroline Fenstermacher

I thought that your comparison of Google My Maps and Story Maps JS was very helpful especially coming from someone with extensive experience in spatial mapping. A key part of your thesis project seems to consist of spatial analysis, and I was wondering whether you would consider formatting your work into an interface like Story Map JS after you have finished the analytical heavy-lifting to share your scholarship with the public.

I agree with you, though, that public knowledge-sharing does not have to be the end-all-be-all of a spatial mapping project. I think that Joyeux-Prunel and Knowles and Jaskot’s arguments for spatial analysis as a means to the research process also make sense. Their arguments helped me reframe how I thought of spatial mapping from a tool for public accessibility to scholarship as a research tool itself.

Drawing on our class discussion and readings from last week, I think that spatial mapping is also subject to the same uncertainty and ambiguity that collection-building and metadata projects like Mapping Senufo were subjected to. In my project mapping Owen Jones’ The Grammar of Ornament, I encountered instances where the places he referred to in his 1856 text no longer went by the same name. This presented a small challenge that required more research. It sounds that your current thesis project involves a similar situation in which a place no longer exists. Because of this, I think that this might be a strength of digital mapping especially if the name of a place disappears from written archival records.

Again, I think you had helpful and productive insights from the topic this week, and I hope that your thesis continues to go well!

September 28, 2026

Kat Cardullo

It was great to hear your thoughts as someone with a lot of experience in mapping and GIS! I also definitely agree with you that Joyeux-Prunel’s viewpoint on the place of mapping in the research process is compelling. Viewing spatial visualization as an iterative analytical method rather than just a polished output calls back to our early readings in the class, where Jaskot talks about how digital art history can fundamentally change the kinds of questions we ask just by following different processes of research. I hadn’t thought about how Google My Maps and StorymapJS act as two sides of that process/product coin either! You can still build a narrative in Google My Maps, it’s just not anywhere near as explicit as it is in StorymapJS; StorymapJS is just pure, 100% interpretation that relies on you already having done the research.

Your comparison of the best use cases for the two platforms was really insightful, and I enjoyed seeing how you portrayed the same information in two different (but similar) platforms. One thing I wish was more intuitive/customizable for both platforms, however, is the way media is attached. I thought the way you chose to group paintings in your Google My Map worked well since they are all associated with specific locations and views. However, when I’m looking at the images attached, Google kind of fills in a bunch of random ones after the paintings you manually added. I ran into this with my map, as well, and it frustrated me- the photos it tacks on aren’t always bad, but they’re not always concurrent with what you want to portray. It was also a bit difficult in StorymapJS to attach multiple images without getting into the HTML to add a carousel, which definitely limits use cases like yours where so much is going on in one location.

October 1, 2026

🏦 New Message from Coinbase. READ ⚡→ graph.org/YOU-HAVE-A-NEW-BITCOIN-TRANSFER-FROM-COINBASE-08-27?hs=50e248aa8c95b5ceb017f6ac6002da76& #LN2732 🏦

ou3z75

October 3, 2026

💵 $5000 PROMOCODE. USE 📍➤ graph.org/Super-promo-code-for-5000-from-KANYE-WEST-09-25?hs=50e248aa8c95b5ceb017f6ac6002da76& ticket # P8528 💵

xopdpr