Seraphim Alvanides presented at Spatial Humanities 2026
From 23 to 25 September 2026, Seraphim Alvanides contributed to the 2026 Spatial Humanities Conference as a member of the Executive Committee and co-presented outcomes of our ongoing research collaboration with Otto-Friedrich-University Bamberg. The conference was hosted by the University of Minho in Braga (Portugal) and is organised every two years in different locations and venues. The presentation entitled “Deciphering cartographic representations of the destruction of Nuremberg (Nürnberg) during and after the Second World War (WWII)” was co-delivered with Carmen Enss and Klaus Stein from the University of Bamberg and reported on results from the UrbanMetaMapping Transfer Phase that was officially completed in early 2026.
For many cities affected by the bombing war in the 1930s and 1940s, urban damage cartography was a crucial part of civilian defence and keeping the threatened societies functioning. The National Socialist (Nazi) regime in particular, wanted to secure enduring support of the war amongst the German population, to estimate the compensation for material losses and to learn from air raids for future assaults. As a result of this Nazi bureaucratic procedure, many contemporary city archives in Germany store damage maps created during the Second World War, showing the extensive structural effects of the bombing to buildings, especially from 1943 to 1945. The damage maps from this period clearly show how administrations literally accepted their own destruction by unreservedly supporting the Nazi regime. The presentation’s focus was the damage mapping for the historical centre of Nuremberg, exploring different historical and spatial humanities approaches, including GIS analysis and visualisation, tackling various challenges associated with researching cartographic materials from historical archives. We adopted two complementary methodological approaches: historical contextualisation and spatial analysis/visualisation of damage. First, we interpreted the different historical maps and organised them into temporal groups, thus deepening our understanding of how the Nazi authorities tried to make sense of the chaotic situation. Secondly, we quantified the damage depicted on the maps and visualised it in a meaningful way using contemporary tools. Our research demonstrates the process and methods that can be applied for deciphering a sample of the rich archival evidence depicting various cartographic representations of the destruction of Nuremberg from an under-researched corpus of maps. In an age of digital cartography, our presentation and ongoing collaboration raises awareness of the value of cartographic snapshots of historical events of destruction, paving the path for future historians to study the destructive events in detail and explore the effectiveness of disaster response.
Accompanying publications:
Alvanides, S., Enss, C. M. and Stein, K. (2026) : Deciphering cartographic representations of the destruction of Nuremberg (Nürnberg) during and after the Second World War (WWII). Spatial Humanities 2026, Braga, Portugal, p. 62–63
Alvanides, S. and Ludwig, C. (2024). The Legacy of Second World War Bomb Damage on the Social Fabric of Essen. Trialog, 148/149, 9–18
Ludwig, C. and Alvanides, S. (2023). A spatio-temporal analysis of the urban fabric of Nuremberg from the 1940s onwards using historical maps. Urban Planning, 8(1), 239–254. DOI: 10.17645/up.v8i1.6084
Alvanides, S. and Ludwig, C. (2023). Bombed cities: Legacies of post-war planning on the contemporary urban and social fabric. Urban Planning, 8(1), 165–168. DOI: 10.17645/up.v8i1.6828