Katherine McDonough

  
  • Humanities and Arts Initiatives Coordinator
  • Stanford University
  • Website: kmcdono.com
  • Twitter: khetiwe24

I recently completed my PhD in History at Stanford. My dissertation is on the politics, labor, and expertise of highway construction in 18th-century France, and so maps are frequently on my mind. I have been interested in the history of cartography and spatial history for many years beginning with an undergraduate investigation for the origins of the "Celtic Sea" in 18th-century maps. These days, I am interested in using databases and visualization tools to analyze quantitative and qualitative data collected by French engineers or written up by leaders in rural villages.

In 2 new projects, I have been studying the possibilities for scholarly communication via radio/podcasts, and also working on a history of archival inventories in regional French archives.

I am interested to learn more about how other historians are working with audio (as sources, and as a communication tool), what new developments there are for mapping messy historic cartographic data, and what kinds of initiatives there are for connecting archivists/librarians/historians using digital tools.