What is..? GIS
| Dates: | 4 February 2015 |
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| Times: | 13:00 - 14:00 |
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| What is it: | Talk |
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| Organiser: | methods@manchester |
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| Speaker: | Niall Cunningham |
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All welcome, no booking required.
Over the last two decades or so, Geographical Information Systems (GIS) have become increasingly embedded within the social sciences as researchers have recognised the need to make sense of the inherent spatial inconsistencies and inequalities that are a feature of every major phenomena that shapes our social worlds. Yet, this advance has not been a linear or uncontroversial one, as the suitability of spatial analytic technologies to the human world became the focus of intense intellectual debate amongst scholars in the 1990s. Those old animosities have now largely given way to a spirit of openness on the part of former critics and humility on the part of GIS advocates as both have come to recognise the strengths and limitations of GIS in their ability to address pressing social questions.
This ‘What is…?’ talk will aim to perform a number of key functions. It will track the emergence of GIS and familiarise students with the key intellectual debates and developments which have surrounded this. It will then move to provide an overview of the major capabilities and shortcomings of mainstream GIS software and their requirements in terms of data structure. GIS are primarily thought of as quantitative technologies but examples in this talk will also highlight new developments in the field of corpus linguistics with the harvesting of massive digitised textual resources to deal with issues of social and historical change.
Speaker
Niall Cunningham
Role: Research Associate in Quantitative Analysis
Travel and Contact Information
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G0.34
Humanities Bridgeford Street
Manchester
