Kosovo: A History in Maps

July 16 | Mirela Altic Seminar

Wednesday

July

2025

6:00 pm

7:30 pm

- Seminar in English -

Presentation of a research project as part of the "Jeudis de la Maison Suger", a residents' research seminar.

This session will feature Mirela Altic in a discussion on the cartographic representations of Kosovo, at the intersection of imperial history, identity construction, and the circulation of geographical knowledge.

Presentation of the project

"In Kosovo: A History in Maps (Brill, 2025), the history of Kosovo is traced through maps that transport us across space and time, from antiquity to the present day. Situated at the crossroads of the Ottoman, Habsburg, and Serbian empires, Kosovo drew the attention of cartographers and geographers from various imperial and cultural contexts. Each contributed to shaping and disseminating distinct representations of Kosovo and its geographical space, generating varied visions of state power, historical memory, identity, imperial and national borders, and territoriality.

The book explores the geographical reality of Kosovo through multiple lenses, including as a space of war, a historical space, a travel space, and a sacred space. It also examines the dissemination of geographical knowledge and cartographic representations of Kosovo, thereby enriching the historiography on knowledge circulation and cultural translation."

→ More information about the book

Speaker

Mirela Altic, Ph.D., is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences and Full Professor at the University of Zagreb. Her expertise is in the map history of the Balkans and the Americas, which gives her particular insight into the comparative history of mapmaking.