The Census, maps and museums: population geovisualisation for the Google generation Seminar

Benedict Anderson stated in ‘Imagined Communities’ that the three institutions had profoundly shaped the way in which the State imagined its dominion were the Census, the Map, and the Museum. This talk offers an insight into the meanings of Geographical Visualisation of populations at the contemporary intersections of these three institutions, aimed to a new public loosely known as ‘the Google generation’. Examples are drawn from different research projects on web geovisualisation of various human geography phenomena developed at University College London and beyond. These are pieced together into a story of innovative visualisation technologies in Geography. The talk will finalise suggesting how these might enable ordinary citizens and collectives to challenge official representations of ethnicity, population groups, and local neighbourhood dynamics in a space‐time continuum.