On October 15, Pace University hosted a workshop titled “How to Tell Stories with Maps,” featuring Dr. Nancy Peluso and funded by the Mellon grant Islands, Archipelagoes, and Cultural Ecologies. The event focused on using maps to illustrate environmental changes over time and their connection to human migration.
Dr. Peluso is recognized for her work in countermapping, particularly with indigenous communities. She has collaborated with these groups to highlight how they claim land and resources and interact with their environments—stories that are often missing from official maps. During the workshop, Dr. Peluso used examples from her research in Indonesia, noting that official maps failed to capture landscape changes resulting from migration. By analyzing historical maps and conducting interviews with local residents, she demonstrated shifts in settlement patterns such as housing locations, food production areas, and plantation work sites. She also pointed out less visible influences on the landscape, like remittances sent home by Indonesian women working abroad as housekeepers.
The workshop was integrated into Dr. Jonathan Williams’s independent study course for students in the Seidenberg School’s master’s program in Human-Centered Design at Pace University. Students were tasked with visually representing landscape changes caused by human migration over time. Additional participants included representatives from Pace’s Department of Environmental Studies and Science, the American Museum of Natural History, New York City Parks, NYU, and Rebuild by Design.
“I really enjoyed working with Pace students,” said Dr. Peluso. “As well as with participants from so many New York environmental institutions. They asked great questions and shared interesting ideas about how to tell these invisible stories.” Dr. Williams added: “Representation in map making extends beyond geographic detail to also include the people, culture, and change that occurs in a place over time. Capturing all this information is a complex visualization challenge for students to address.”
The Mellon grant Islands, Archipelagoes, and Cultural Ecologies is led by faculty members from Dyson College—including Dr. Erica Johnson, E. Melanie DuPuis, Emily Welty, Matthew Bolton, Anne Toomey—and Katy Kuh from Haub Law School.
