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Department of Spatial Planning

RAM Colloquium with Seraphim Alvanides

Start: Location: GBIII/214 and online
We are looking forward to host Dr Seraphim Alvanides (Bamberg University) for a talk on 'analysing historical maps of Second World War urban damage'.
Portrait of Dr Seraphim Alvanides © Seraphim Alvanides​/​Bamberg University

Title: Spatial humanities and bombed cities: analysing historical maps of urban damage

Time and venue: Thursday, 27 November 2025, 10 am CET; GBIII/214 and online

Registration via: Google Forms

Abstract:

There is a wealth of maps from the Second World War depicting bomb damage of cities in various ways and in great detail, many of them languishing in various archives worldwide. The project UrbanMetaMapping (Bamberg University, Germany) has developed tools for making these maps findable and for analysing them with GIS. Two examples will be presented in detail for the cities of Essen and Nuremberg, both heavily bombed, while their post-war fate followed different paths. Historical damage maps offer a methodological and substantive framework for the analysis of postwar cities that should be of interest to city planners and policymakers.

Speaker bio:

Seraphim (Serafeim) Alvanides is a senior researcher with the Centre for Heritage Conservation Studies and Technologies (KDWT) at Bamberg University, with research interests in land use change, urban sprawl, environmental justice and spatial humanities. He has methodological expertise in quantitative methods, urban analytics and geographical information science and is a co-Editor of Environment & Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science.