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University of Oxford
School of Geography and the Environment

 School of Geography and the Environment

IGS: Current and Recent Graduate Research

Joe Gerlach

Vernacular mappings: affect, virtuality, performance

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Academic Profile

Joe is a D.Phil. student at the School of Geography and the Environment. Joe has a first class BA (Hons) in Geography and a distinction in MSc in Nature, Society and Environmental Policy, both from the University of Oxford. Joe's research interests include geographies of affect, critical cartographies and spaces of global capitalism; topics he teaches occasionally at undergraduate level at Jesus College.

Current Research

The proliferation of virtual cartographic technologies such as GoogleEarth and participatory modes of mapping has prompted geographers to re-think both critical cartographic discourse and the ways in which mapping cultivates and affects geographic imaginations, movements and bodily processes in and through space. Taking 'non-representational' approaches in geography as a theoretical point of departure, Joe's doctoral research interrogates the cultures, practices and politics of participatory, or 'vernacular', mapping groups, in turn suggesting that these novel cartographic processes engender spaces (virtual or otherwise) of potential; spaces for micro, community and environmental politics. Apprehending cultural geography's engagement with post-structuralist philosophers, including Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, the study poses three research questions:

  1. What are the performances, practices, cultures and motivations of participatory mapping groups such as OpenStreetMap (a wiki-based mapping collective)? How do they differ from the cartographic practices, imaginations and epistemologies of antecedent GIS technologies and institutional cartographies?
  2. How do the affective and virtual registers of 'vernacular mapping' help to understand these forms of map-making both in terms of web-based cartographic practices and societal geographic imaginations?
  3. What are the social, technical and political consequences of vernacular mappings in terms of their potential to engender spaces for micro-political action? Can they, for example, contribute to efforts to develop more public-participation GIS (PPGIS) or resist co-option by corporate cartographies?

Publications