A Spatiotemporal Analysis of Walled Cities in Medieval and Early Modern China and Europe

A spatiotemporal analyses on infrastructure data (walls, bridges, and roads) collected from historical and archaeological sources to identify patterns in the construction, destruction, and maintenance of infrastructures. One of the research outputs is a public geospatial platform that will allow the user to view, query, and analyze the data (see infrastructurelives.eu for more information on the project aims).

The Lives and Afterlives of Imperial Material Infrastructure in Southeastern China (InfraLives) investigates the role of large-scale infrastructure in processes of regional and empire-wide integration, or the break-down thereof, in late imperial Chinese history (ca. 1000-1800) with a focus on the Southeast coastal areas. This project, conceived and led by the PI prof. Dr. Hilde De Weerdt at the International Institute for Social History (IISH) and KU Leuven, envisages a systematic longue-durée analysis of the social history of material infrastructures and to this end is developing a highly innovative event-based digital annotation method.

InfraLives is sponsored by the Dutch Research Council (NWO, Open, no. 406.20.HW.006) and operates in tandem with the project Regionalizing Infrastructures in Chinese History, sponsored by the European Research Council (Horizon 2020, ERC Advanced Grant No. 101019509) and led by prof. Dr. Hilde De Weerdt at KU Leuven.