The Lie of the Land: Who Controls the Map?

His work blends satellites, code, and unconventional datasets to uncover how power and conflict shape the world. After completing a PhD at Oxford on the drivers of insurgent recruitment in Turkey, he began developing open-source tools that turn images and radar data into evidence – from mapping bomb damage to tracing environmental destruction. As a Tech Fellow at Bellingcat, he wrote and built investigations that pushed the boundaries of open-source research.

He studies everyday digital mapping practices, counter-mapping and radical cartographies. Mike is a director of the Livingmaps Network – a network of researchers, community activists, artists and others with a common interest in the use of mapping for social change, public engagement, critical debate and creative forms of community campaigning. His latest books are All Mapped Out (2024) and New Directions in Radical Cartography (2021).

She is also a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Newnham College, University of Cambridge. Her widely acclaimed non-fiction books include Sway, Hysterical and (M)otherhood, and she has written for publications including The Guardian, Scientific American and Times Literary Supplement. She has been awarded the Transmission Prize for 'making complex scientific ideas accessible' and the Crucible NESTA award for 'innovative inter-disciplinary work'. She was a 2023 Eccles Institute Visiting Fellow at the British Library.

Formerly Google’s Geospatial Technologist, he led initiatives to apply geography to organising information, support open data for AI, and connect Google with governments, academia, and standards bodies. He chairs the Open Geospatial Consortium and serves as Visiting Professor at UCL. Previously, as Ordnance Survey’s first Chief Technology Officer, he helped shift its focus from mapping to geospatial information. Ed holds an honorary doctorate from Kingston University, and fellowships of the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Institute of Navigation. In 2024, he received the RGS Professional Geography Award.