Online International Spring School on Visualization Maps & Warfare & News Coverage

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Lectures given by Alexandra Iburn, Bouke van Gorp, Vladimir Polach, Jurji Pidlisnyj, Martin Jirusek, and Vit Vozneilek

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Summary

This 3-day summer school put on by Palacký University Olomouc was focused on the role of mapping in war time. It is a timely issue and one I was personally interested in, so I was greatly looking forward to the event. Going into the summer school, I was not exactly sure what to expect in terms of topics or activities, but in the end, I found the school engaging and thought-provoking.

I was pleasantly surprised by how much history was included in this summer school. As the lectures commenced, I realized I had a deficit of knowledge in regards to central and eastern Europe. As such, the lectures that included in-depth background on Czechia, Ukraine, and Russia from the Second World War up until present day easily captured my attention. These talks gave me great insight into how different communities conceptualize their identity and the ideologies that are currently driving the war in Ukraine as well as other worldly events.

While I learned a lot of new history during the summer school, I also learned about other current topics and events that I knew little about, such as present-day geopolitics. A few different lectures focused on geopolitics, with Alexandra Iburn and Bouke van Gorp’s talk on Big Tech and geopolitics and Martin Jirusek’s talk on energy security and geopolitics being two of the most notable examples. While I studied geopolitics in my undergraduate courses, their talks gave me fresh and contemporary insights into the current state of world affairs.

On that note of geopolitics, while I found all the talks engaging, it was the last talk that interested me the most. This lecture was given by Vit Vozneilek on the topic of mapping languages in relation to geopolitics. The cultural and political aspects of geography and mapping are originally what got me interested in geoinformatics and those subjects are still of great interest to me. In fact, this talk got me thinking about potential thesis topics, such as the power of maps in instantiating, preserving, and developing community identities.

Overall, I really enjoyed this summer school as it challenged my thinking and taught me a lot about current affairs and the power of maps in shaping identities and world affairs. It even helped me develop some potential thesis ideas.