Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies Research Seminar Series: Luisa Gandolfo

About the event

How do we use maps as pedagogical and research tools? What do shifts in digital cartography mean for our understanding of the political and cultural geography of a place? This talk considers how online mapping tools can function as dynamic archives and cartographical mnemonics that reinscribe erased place names and narratives of heritage, memory, and loss in Palestine-Israel.

A large body of literature explores the significance of maps as an archive of political and geographical change, yet fewer studies consider how online maps present spaces of memory contestation. The power of maps can be attributed partly to the trust we place in them: our dependence on the sheets of landscape, combined with a faith in the science of mapping, often enables the question of whose map we are viewing, to escape. The cost of this is steep and the unquestioning glance overlooks how maps have been (and continue to be) intrinsic to colonisation, dispossession, and erasure.

By examining how mapping apps layer the past over the present, this talk suggests that there is a possibility for memory work: by reading the names of the depopulated sites, learning the dates and the scale of displacement, users and creators can subtly challenge the erasure of the sites that is presented by mainstream online maps.

Please note - Dr Gandolfo will be joining us for this seminar online.

About the speaker

Dr Luisa Gandolfo is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Aberdeen. Her research has been funded by the European Institutes for Advanced Study/Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Leverhulme Trust and the British Academy, and centers on cultural and political memory, and remembrance.

Her recent work examines mapping, boundaries, and im/mobilities in Palestine-Israel and the role of cultural memory and heritage as a form of resistance. 

About the seminar series

This seminar series critically employs the concept of decoloniality, a term coined by sociologist Anibal Quijano. By questioning the boundaries of knowledge production, agency and representation more specifically within the curriculum in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, the series will bring together a diverse range of perspectives on historical and contemporary topics, interrogating some unexamined framings that shape our understanding of the Middle East.

Seminars will be interdisciplinary, covering diverse themes, such as: Arabic teaching pedagogy; archiving and the production of history during and after the British Mandate in Scotland, Lebanon, Palestine and Somalia; Saudi Arabia’s progressive narratives; the role of libraries and librarians in the UK.

The series also explores new avenues in the study of the region, reflecting on its positionality within Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies and by looking into consolidating interdisciplinarity and dialogue with other fields.  

How to join

Events are free and everyone is welcome.

All talks are followed by a reception. 

No booking is required if you would like to attend in person, on campus.

If you would like to attend online,  please contact Dr Farah Aboubakr for a Zoom link and passcode.

Joining online? Email Farah Aboubakr for Zoom details

Are you interested in studying with us?

We are the only university in Scotland to offer courses in the Muslim world's three main languages, placing Arabic, Persian and Turkish in the context of history, literature, culture, religion and politics, past and present.

Choose from a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, including PhD programmes.

Find out more about Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Edinburgh