Online Course: History of Maps

Part I: The Map as a Cognitive System

Week 1 – Monday 12 January

How to Read a Map: Introduction and Theory

Tutor: Jack Englehardt and Tom Harper

What can a map reveal beyond the terrain it depicts? This opening week introduces key approaches to understanding maps as cultural texts rather than neutral records of space. Drawing on the work of critical cartographers like J.B. Harley and David Woodward, we will explore how maps serve as agents of authority, ideology, and imagination, and how informed map-readers can ‘decode’ these rich layers. Participants will gain an overview of the major traditions of cartographic thought through history, while considering how choices of projection, orientation, scale, and symbolism all shape our understanding of the world we all inhabit. Lastly, participants will enjoy a behind-the scenes introduction to the British Library’s own collections in the form of a conversation with lead curator Tom Harper.

Week 2 – Monday 19 January

Mapping Faith: Mappae Mundi and Medieval Cosmology 

Tutor: Dr. Paul Stock

Medieval world maps, or mappae mundi, offer profound insights into how people once conceptualised space, faith, and knowledge on a single canvas. This week examines the map not as a literal representation of real places but as a visual theology – a tool for making sense of the divine order. By looking closely at examples such as the thirteenth century Psalter World Map and its contemporaries, we will discuss how these early works integrated biblical history, cosmology, and moral hierarchy into their depiction of the Earth. We’ll ask what it means to ‘locate’ humanity within the cosmos and how these maps framed a universal order centred on spiritual meaning rather than physical accuracy. 

Part II: The Map as a Social Construction

Week 3 – Monday 26 January

Mapping Nature: Environment and Enlightenment on Paper

Tutor: Jack Englehardt 

As scientific rationalism and overseas exploration transformed European thought, maps had to be re-thought to accommodate new places full of peoples, plants, and animals quite unlike those at home. This week explores how maps were converted into tools of classification during the early modern Enlightenment, becoming a means for humanity to measure and master the state of nature. We will examine how maps interacted with science to reveal complex environmental systems – from rainfall and temperature patterns to botanical kingdoms – and how these visual tools shaped emerging ideas about empire, modernity, and industrial civilisation. Participants will consider the double role of environmental maps as both instruments of scientific inquiry and imaginative projections, reflecting changing relationships between people and planet.

Week 4 – Monday 2 February

Mapping Society: Cartography and the Urban Milieu

Tutor: Jack Englehardt 

By the mid-nineteenth century, cartographers increasingly turned the map inwards, looking to investigate both rapidly changing urban environments and the living conditions of their diverse inhabitants. This session explores the rise of social and economic mapping, as cartography became a key intervention in Victorian attempts to combat social ills, including poverty, crime, health, and inequality. We’ll discuss how positivist reformers like Charles Booth used mapping to reveal the hidden structures of urban life, shaping locational information into large-scale moral and political narratives. Participants will consider the power of Victorian maps to expose social problems, as well as the risks of turning human lives into spatial data. How does mapping shape the way societies divide themselves, and what ethical questions might they raise?

Part III: The Map as Material Culture

Week 5 – Monday 9 February

Mapping Movement: Transit and Tourism in the Modern Era

Tutor: Jack Englehardt 

The twentieth century brought revolutionary forms of mobility, collapsing old notions of distance and inspiring new kinds of maps to match. This week investigates how the expansion of roads, railways, and air travel around the globe made the map an indispensable companion of modern living. Whether folded into pockets or printed in guidebooks, these everyday artefacts help reveal how map design influenced consumer perceptions and behaviour as the modern world took shape. We’ll explore the aesthetics and logic of travel, from schematic diagrams of abstracted space to tourist maps selling a particular standard of living. Participants will reflect on map-handling as a material encounter, in which movement becomes a daily act of orientation within the modern world.  

Week 6 – Monday 16 February

Counter-Mapping: Imagined Worlds and Alternative Geographies

Tutor: Jack Englehardt

Our final week turns to the creative and subversive uses of maps. By turning to geographies from satire and works of fiction, we’ll explore how artists, writers, and filmmakers have redrawn the world to challenge dominant narratives. Participants will examine how maps continue to function even in openly fantastical spaces – charting not what is, but what could be. We’ll consider the continued cultural power of mapping as a form of metaphor: a means of reclaiming territory, identity, and imagination. In closing, we return to the course’s central question – what does it mean to ‘read’ a map – and reflect on how the act of mapping continues to shape our collective understanding of space, power, and possibility.

None required.

Some course materials will be shared in advance of the first session.

A joining link will be emailed to you prior to the first session. 

Online courses are live-captioned by Microsoft Teams. Pleaseemail adultlearning@bl.uk todiscuss your accessibility requirements.