Mapping, geography

Abstract

This Themed Intervention consists of short papers written by nine plenary speakers at the 2024 Annual Conference of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers plus a paper by the Society's Cartographic Collections Manager. In this introduction, I explain why I chose mapping as the conference Chair's theme. I give a sense of how the relationship between geography and mapping has been addressed through previous conference addresses and themes. I then explore three types of cartographic genealogies. The first shows how histories of cartography traditionally took the form of family trees. The second explores disjunctures between previous phases of cartography and brings us to current definitions of mapping. The third genealogy is that of previously subjugated forms of mapping knowledge and practice which are now defining features of the field (critical quantitative; empire, race, and Indigenous; counter‐; representational and more‐than‐representational).