Spatial Visualization in/for Digital Humanities Research

This course provides a gentle introduction to mapping and spatial visualization for storytelling in the digital humanities. Rather than focusing on a particular software or technical workflow, we will introduce a variety of mapping tools while evaluating their respective affordances and limitations. Short lectures and demonstrations will be paired with hands-on exercises and collaborative problem solving, as well as discussions of emerging research areas in cartography and digital mapping. By the end of this course, participants will be aware of the breadth of spatial visualizations possible in digital humanities work, recognize their applicability, and have practical experience making maps. The structure and pacing of this course is geared towards an audience of geospatial novices to intermediate mappers. You do not need any technical skills coming into this workshop — just a sense of curiosity about how you can explore space and place through your work!

Course Outline

Day Topics Tools/Learning Outcomes
Monday Introduction to Spatial Visualization On Day 1, we will introduce key ideas and critical methods in cartography and geographic information science (GIS), and, discuss how maps, as spatial representations, function in digital scholarship and humanities research. In the afternoon, we will talk about spatial data and how to find, download, and properly format data for use in various spatial visualization platforms. Finally, we will provide a project design worksheet to structure your learning throughout the week.
Tuesday Mapping with QGIS Day 2 will provide a conceptual and practical orientation to geographic information systems (GIS), a software often used to analyze, modify, and visualize spatial data. You will develop familiarity with QGIS — a free and open-source GIS — by making both reference maps and thematic maps visualizing historical data of Montréal.
Wednesday Tools and Workflows in QGIS + Story Maps The morning of Day 3 will be spent further exploring common tools and workflows in QGIS. You will learn how to add basemaps to your QGIS project, georeference historical maps, generate time series and radial flow maps, and perform basic vector analysis. In the afternoon, we will pivot to “Story Maps” — interactive websites that combine multimedia, narrative, and spatial visualizations. You will have the chance to create a Story Map using the free version of ArcGIS StoryMaps, as well as its open-source alternate, Knightlab StoryMap.
Thursday Web Mapping Day 4 will concern web mapping, that is, making dynamic, interactive maps that are hosted on the web and can be shared with others via a link. You will learn how to create web maps in 2 different manners: (1) online, through platforms such as uMap and Google MyMaps, and (2) with code powered by Leaflet.
Friday Wrap-up Our last day together will provide a space to wrap-up projects, ask questions, and review skills learned.


Instructor Bios

Alex Alisauskas is a Humanities and Social Sciences Librarian (Maps/Geospatial Data) at the University of British Columbia Library where she supports researchers in History, Central, Eastern and Northern European Studies, and Geography, as well as researchers hoping to incorporate maps, spatial methods, and GIS tools in their research. She holds a PhD in Visual and Cultural Studies, and prior to becoming a librarian, she was a professor in art history and liberal studies and conducted research on contemporary art practices. Her current research explores artistic uses of archives, mental health in libraries, and inclusive pedagogical practices in digital scholarship.

Lily Demet is a PhD student in Geography at the University of British Columbia studying everyday spatial practices of navigating the city. Their recent projects include “Making space for deep mapping: rendering theory as practice”, a research-creation thesis which experiments with digital methods for theorymaking, and Deep mapping cartography’s limits: the artfulness of rendering spatial practice, an effort towards bringing process philosophy and mapping into conversation. Lily is also an artist and cartographer, and teaches tools for spatial visualization at the university library.


In preparation for the course

To prepare for the course, please download the following data and software, and create free user accounts for the various mapping platforms we will use. Additionally, please bring your own personal computer.

While we will be providing sample projects to work from, we welcome you to bring your own projects, data and ideas to work on throughout the week.

  • 1 Download QGIS Please come with the latest version of QGIS downloaded and installed on your personal computer. QGIS is a free and open-source geographic information system (GIS) that runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems.

  • 2 Additionally, please download and install the code editor Visual Studio Code. This will enable you to swiftly and efficiently make web maps. While this course will involve some basic HTML, no previous coding experience is required.

  • 3 Download and unzip the workshop data folder below. This will be available on the course website in May. You will receive an email when the course website and data are ready to download. Download it to a location on your physical computer, such as Desktop or Downloads, not OneDrive. This item is quite large, so please download to an external thumbdrive if needed.

    Download Data

  • 4 Create free accounts for the various platforms we will use.
    • ArcGIS Online StoryMaps See here for documentation on creating a public/free account. If your institution subscribes to ArcGIS, you can use the subscription version but ensure you have access through your institution.
    • KnightLab StoryMap (click MAKE A STORYMAP and you will be prompted to sign in/sign up)
    • uMap uMap is a free and open-source platform that allows you to create web maps using OpenStreetMap (OSM) data.
    • GitHub GitHub is an internet hosting service that allows you to upload files into a repository, or project folder, where they can be shared and collaboratively tracked and edited by a team. This makes it quite popular amongst code developers. We will use GitHub to host our web maps!
    • Finally, if you don’t already have a Google account, go ahead and create one if you want to have the option of using Google MyMaps.

  • 5 Review course overview page.

  • 6 Tell us about your experience mapping and project background! Please take a moment to complete the short survey circulated in May so that we can best prepare to support you.


Site Acknowledgements

This workshop was authored by Lily Demet and Alex Alisauskas, and taught at the 2026 Digital Humanities Summer Institute in Montréal, Canada.

Site template adapted from the just-the-docs Jekyll template created by Patrick Marsceil and available under the MIT License

Copyright: UBC Library Research Commons, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license

This extended workshop was authored by Lily Demet and Alex Alisauskas, and taught at the 2026 Digital Humanities Summer Institute in Montréal, Canada.

Table of contents

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