Artemis-UA: the 'Blueprint of the City' - an open mapping infrastructure for research into past and present urban waterscapes.

BOF-UA, 01/06/2025 - 31/05/2027, Promoter: Jongepier Iason

As recurrent flood disasters and countless policy plans demonstrate, we are in desperate need of more 'water-resilient' cities. This calls for changes in policy, infrastructures, but also in the way we interact with our natural and 'blue' environment. One of the roles the academic community has is to provide the fundamental knowledge to underpin well-informed decision making and to raise awareness within local communities. Gathering and analyzing the required data, however, is hindered by the lack of a common spatial infrastructure, which allows mapping the long-term evolution of urban waterscapes and analyzing the complex socio-ecological interactions that made them a product of centuries of human reconfiguring of river floodplains. Artemis-UA will create this open mapping infrastructure for research on cities and their blue infrastructure, in a long-term historical perspective (16th-20th centuries). It will do so based on a unique data-source, which sets us apart internationally: the extremely rich (but dispersed) historical map collections that Belgian archives hold and which document - often handwritten and in incredible detail - the human use and reconfiguration of (urban) rivers, river wetlands, water wells, sewers, drainage ditches etc. from the sixteenth century until today. Designed as the UA-contribution to the Artemis FWO-Medium Scale Research infrastructure (initiated at UA, but only funded at UGent), Artemis-UA unites specialists at the Centre for Urban History (CUH), the Centre for Research on Environmental and Social Change (CRESC), AntweRp Cultural HEritage Sciences (ARCHES) and the Urban Studies Institute (USI). These UAntwerp research groups are at the forefront of international and interdisciplinary research on urban waterscapes, its management and inherent risks and opportunities. Artemis-UA will focus on a study area that is in the heart of many of their research projects: the Scheldt valley, which was recently proclaimed as National Park and is part of the UNESCO Global Geopark Schelde Delta. For three cities within the Scheldt valley - Antwerp, Dendermonde and Lokeren - Artemis-UA will realize a 'blueprint' by 1) collecting relevant handwritten/local maps covering these cities and their (peri-)urban areas over the long-term, processing & enriching these maps by 2) crowdsourced georeferencing and 3) automated landscape feature extraction and 4) publishing the derived spatial data publicly via an Open Mapping Infrastructure. The long-term focus, the vast collection of ca. 300 highly detailed maps and the publication of both exactly located maps and derived 'research ready' geodata turn Artemis-UA into a truly groundbreaking and unique infrastructure. Artemis-UA will elevate the University of Antwerp to an internationally renowned knowledge hub for historically-informed analysis and decision-making on urban water challenges, further strengthening the leading position of UA-research in the (socio-)environmental analysis of rivers, river estuaries and flood management. More specifically, mapping and reconstructing long-term changes in the urban waterscape has huge valorization potential for any research on 1) urban planning and urban development; 2) inclusive water governance; 3) the unequal exposure to and awareness of water-related risks and 4) the integration of water heritage into climate adaptation strategies.

CLARIAH-VL+: paving the way for a SSH Open Science Cloud for Flanders

FWO-IRI, 01/01/2025 - 31/12/2028, Co-promoter: Jongepier Iason, website​

CLARIAH-VL+ focuses on boosting research in the Humanities and Social Sciences using digital tools and services and fostering collaborations to create an accessible cloud platform for researchers. It unifies disciplines, which share the challenge of utilising a wide range of sources and heritage from ancient manuscripts to modern digital data. The project acts as a bridge, connecting researchers in Flanders with broader European research communities. It addresses three major societal issues: environmental change, social inequality, and the complexities of migration and cultural diversity. By integrating insights from Social Sciences with a detailed analysis typical of the Humanities, and linking these to other fields like ecology and geography, CLARIAH-VL+ aims to provide comprehensive new understandings. A key aspect of CLARIAH-VL+ is its focus on transforming old and often neglected data — like weather records and population statistics — into useful information. This data is crucial for tackling pressing societal challenges. CLARIAH-VL+ commits to providing the infrastructure to use these data in practice by harnessing the capabilities of large language models and generative AI and securing the sustainability of essential research components. Through these efforts, CLARIAH-VL+ not only makes research easier, but also Humanities and Social Sciences research more relevant and impactful for society.

Artemis. Advanced Research Tools for Environmental studies in an open Mapping Infrastructure for historical maps of the Scheldt valley.

FWO-MZI, 01/05/2024 - 30/04/2028, Promotor: Jongepier Iason, website​

Historical maps are not only unique heritage objects but also containers of precious data on the evolution of the cultural and natural landscape. From the 16th century onwards, in present-day Belgium, handwritten local maps were produced in great numbers, followed by the famous Ferraris and printed Vandermaelen map series, as well as large numbers of large or medium scale cadastral maps. What is left of this unique heritage is dispersed over public and private collections, making users of digital historical maps struggle to use these maps to their full potential. Artemis is convinced that this wealth of detailed maps and map series has great potential to investigate landscapes, their evolution over time and their possible future(s) - a potential that could be used in varying fields of research such as Historical Geography, Ecology (biodiversity and water management) and Spatial Planning. Artemis aims to process, digitally enrich, make available and valorize well-defined corpora of both handwritten and printed maps before ca. 1880, using state of the art extraction techniques - as automated localization, toponym recognition and (landscape) feature extraction - with in finality, publication in a IIIF-enabled Linked Open Data Research Infrastructure. The project joins forces of both the University of Antwerp and Ghent University, backed up by the main Belgian map collection holders (ARA/KBR/NGI), focussing on the Scheldt River Valley which connects Antwerp to Ghent.

Hic Sunt Dracones. Data-driven analysis of the (un)changing nature of toponyms and its implications for toponym-based landscape reconstructions.

BOF-DOCRPONIEUWZAP, 01/10/2022 - 30/09/2026, Promoter: Jongepier Iason, website​

The landscape surrounding us contains countless toponyms or place-names, representing an enormous time depth. Extracting historical information from these impressive sources of information, however, has one major pitfall: not all of these toponyms have a 1-on-1 relationship with 'real' historical landscape features. A medieval cartographer could easily add 'Hic Sunt Dracones' ['Here be Dragons'] as a dummy toponym to label an unexplored area, and toponyms can shift in space or meaning. A concrete and satisfactory method to deal with these complications is still to be developed. Hic Sunt Dracones models the nexus toponym-meaning-landscape for a region well documented by sequences of historical maps, and subsequently uses machine learning to map landscape change of an area for which limited cartographic evidence, but only toponyms are available in order to: (1) understand the potential of toponyms to shed reliable light on a landscape, (2) construct toponym and landscape datasets via new methodologies for extracting text and landscape features from historical maps, (3) apply machine learning for a data-driven landscape reconstruction and (4) investigate the scalability of the methodology. Hic Sunt Dracones will lead to considerable advances in the fields of toponymy and landscape history by providing innovative answers and methodological solutions to the fundamental question when and under which circumstances toponyms change in meaning and space.

A Connected History of Medieval Mediterranean Diplomacy: The Mamluk Sultanate, Italy, and the Crown of Aragon (14th-15th century) (Diplomaticon).

EOS (FWO/FNRS), 01/01/2022 - 31/12/2025, Co-promoter: Jongepier Iason, website​

The Mediterranean is often seen as a dividing border between two worlds: North and South; Christian and Muslim. This pattern has been mostly influenced and supported by national historiographies, which tended to create borders and accentuate differences between areas that were originally connected. DIPLOMATICON will break free from this one-sided view on the history of the Mediterranean region. It will do so by presenting the very first example of a History of Diplomacy that truly reflects the late medieval context of interactions and exchanges between the Islamic and Christian worlds. Based on the approaches and methodologies advocated by the New Diplomatic History and Connected History, the project will focus on the three most important actors of the late medieval world: the Mamluk Sultanate of Cairo on the Islamic side and the Italian polities as well as the Crown of Aragon on the Christian side. DIPLOMATICON will challenge the common narratives of political and cultural antagonism between the two worlds by pointing at the spheres of contact and interaction, where an informal type of diplomacy could be performed. This approach will allow to reveal the whole set of actors and agents involved in diplomatic processes, as well as the huge and extended networks they built throughout the entire region, which facilitated a broad range of cultural transfers among the various participants.

​Mapping the Urban History of Europe.

Utrecht University, 01/02/2023 - 31/05/2023, Promotor: Jongepier Iason

This project will produce a large series of maps to be published within the "Cambridge Urban History of Europe", a three-volume showcase of the achievement of fifty years of research on European urban history. Each volume will cover a major upsurge in levels of urbanization: Greek and Roman Antiquity, Middle Ages and Early Modern, Modern Europe from 1850 to the present.

Virtual technology for resilient fortification heritage (VIRTUAFORT).

02/06/2021 - 31/07/2022, Promotor: Jongepier Iason, website​

The VirtuaFort project is building a Virtual Reality application that includes Fort Lillo and its immediate surroundings. Hereby, a historically correct 3D-reconstruction of the fort in the 17th century is brought to life by means of immersive technology. At the same time, various storylines will be linked to the fortress, in order to enthuse both inhabitants and local and sustainable tourism about this unique location. The VR application will also make it possible to switch between the past, the present and the future plans for the fortress. The application will be launched publicly in early 2022, after which a possible expansion towards other sites will be investigated.

Exploring the potential of digital historical maps for landscape history: crowdsourcing the Arenberg historical map collection. (DighiMapper) 

BOF, 01/04/2021 - 31/03/2022, Promoter: Jongepier Iason, website​

For a long time historical maps have been cherished as objects of great value and beauty, illustrating the evolving representation of the world, cities and (rural) landscapes. Recently, they tend to be seen as more than mere illustrations. Up until now, however, preparing historical maps and building spatial databases of directly deductible information to allow the use of these maps as primary sources for fundamental research, was a very labor-intensive process. This is caused mainly by the necessity of two time-consuming preparatory steps that have to be undertaken to (pre-)process historical maps: 1) the georectification (overlay of historical maps with present-day situation) and 2) the spatial annotation of toponyms (transcription and localisation of place names). Grasping the full opportunities of the recently started close FED-tWIN-co-operation between the History Department of the University of Antwerp and the Belgian State Archives, this project aims to offer an alternative to solve the bottle-neck in the processing and use of digital historical maps: the development of a web-application for crowdsourcing both the georectification and spatial annotation of historical maps. Teaming up with ICT-partner Webmapper, ca. 3.000 high-resolution scanned historical maps from the Arenberg collection, digitized by and held at the Belgian State Archives, will be opened to the 'crowd' in order to establish a spatial database of up to (or over) 100.000 toponyms. Once completed, this database serves a threefold research objective: 1) fundamental research on landscape history based on 'big data of the past', in this case large datasets of toponyms; 2) using local toponyms as a way to include other sources for spatial research and 3) an exploration of the possibilities and limitations of crowdsourcing when scaling-up the research in the coming years.

For the full list, click HERE​

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Jongepier, Iason, and Marc Carnier. “Het algemeen rijksarchief in brussel”. Caert-thresoor : tijdschrift voor de geschiedenis van de cartografie 44, no. 1 (2025): 29–31.

Jongepier, Iason. “De (planimetrische) nauwkeurigheid van het stadsplan van brugge”. In De wereld van marcus gerards - brugge in 1562 / goeminne, koen [edit.], 79–81. Brugge: De Boekenmaker, 2024.

Soens, Tim, Maïka De Keyzer, and Iason Jongepier. “La cartographie et les droits de propriété dans la flandre rurale, du xvie au xviiie siècle”. In Cartographier le parcellaire rural dans l'europe d'ancien régime / antoine, A. [edit.]; benjamin landais, B. [edit.], 177–200. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2024. https://doi.org/10.4000/BOOKS.PUR.195139.

Jongepier, Iason. “Portolan Charts in a Digital Era” 9 (2023): 25–38.

van Kooten, Rogier, and Iason Jongepier. “Gistorical antwerp : digitale geschiedenis voor groot en klein” 45, no. 2 (2023).

Jongepier, Iason. “Fed-twin "DIGHIMAPS" - digitale kaarten en archieven: hoe activeren we cartografische collecties in een digitale wereld?”. Archives et bibliothèques de belgique 93 (2022): 37–45.

Jongepier, Iason, and Melvin Wevers. “Dossier: digitale stadsgeschiedenis, de belofte ingelost? inleiding”. Stadsgeschiedenis, no. 2 (2022): 108–16.

Van Damme, Ilja, Hilde Greefs, Iason Jongepier, and T. Soens. Historical Atlas of Antwerp. Between Aspiration and Achievement. Bussum: Thoth, 2022.

Van Damme, Ilja, Hilde Greefs, Iason Jongepier, and T. Soens. Historische atlas van antwerpen. stad van droom en daad. Bussum: Thoth, 2022.

Vannieuwenhuyze, Bram, and Iason Jongepier. “Historische cartografie in belgië”. Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire 99, no. 3-4 (2022): 803–14.

Jongepier, Iason. “1783 – het westerschelde-estuarium wordt herbedijkt. een vroegmoderne bedijkingskaart van de nieuw-arenbergpolder”. In De geschiedenis van belgië in 100 oude kaarten / de maeyer, philippe; et al., 198–201. Tielt: Lannoo, 2021.

​For the full list, click HERE​