Mirela Altic

Mirela Altic is a Chief Research Fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences and Full Professor in the Department of History, University of Zagreb. She is specialized in social history of maps, cross-cultural knowledge exchange and early modern encounter. Besides her interest in Central European map history, over the last decade she has published extensively on the on Jesuit cartography and missionary contribution to the history of mapmaking and exploration in general. She is currently devoted to studying Jesuit maps of the Middle East as well and South and Southeast Asia.

The project

Title: “Jesuit contribution to the geographical knowledge of South and South-East Asia: the intersections of Jesuit science and traditional non-Western knowledge in visual and textual imaginary”

Selection of publications

Articles, chapters and contributions to collective volumes (selection)

• "Military or Missionary Map? The First Topographic Map of Northern New Spain (1725–1729)." Chapter in Mapping Empires: Colonial Cartographies of Land and Sea, edited by Alexander Kent, Soetkin Vervust, Imre Demhardt and Nick Millea, 263–285. Heidelberg – New York – Dordrecht – London: Springer International Publishing, 2020.

• "Jesuit Contribution to the Mapping of the Philippine Islands: A Case of the 1734 Pedro Murillo Velarde Chart". Chapter in: Mapping Asia: Cartographic Encounters Between East and West, edited by Martijn Storms, Mario Cams, Imre Josef Demhardt, Ferjan Ormeling, 73–94. Heidelberg – New – York – Dordrecht – London: Springer International Publishing, 2019.

• "The Evolution of Maps Produced by Adam Gilg Between 1688–93: A Case-Study on the Production and Circulation of Jesuit Geographical Knowledge of Sonora", to be published in Terrae Incognitae - Journal of the Society for the History of Discoveries, 2024

• "Sacred Landscapes of Greater Syria: Joseph Besson’s 1660 Jesuit Perspective", Journal of Jesuit Studies 11 (20 24): 226–247

• "Mapping the Missionary World: 19th Century Missionary Atlases with Special Regard to Justus Perthes’ Production". Imago Mundi - Journal for the History of Cartography, 75/1 (2023): 1–21.

Books (most recent)

• Encounters in the New World: Jesuit Cartography of the Americas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022.