Because of my internship, I now believe I have the skills and knowledge to begin work on DHP mapping projects. Using GIS and undertaking digital mapping has been a hope of mine for a long time, but what I lacked was any idea of how to do it. Where do you start? What skills do I need? What equipment do I need? What information do I need? Dr. Madden has helped me to begin to answer these questions. While I am far from proficient in GIS, I have the knowledge to find answers on how to do the technical work. I also learned that sometimes the technology is still not going to do what you want it to. When that happens, one mainly needs patience.

More than the technical knowledge in how to create the fancy maps that one can find online, I now have an idea of the larger process of such a project. We started by looking, not at maps, but at a NSF grant application to support Mapping Violence in Early Modern Italy. The grant was rejected, and Dr. Madden took us through the process of planning, writing, and revising a grant. I wouldn’t have thought of this as part of an internship on DPH mapping, but I cannot stress how helpful this was. I’ve mentioned this before, but the quality of the final project is dependent on the many hours of unseen work in the planning and preparation process. One is not going to get the funding to create the fancy final product unless it is thoughtfully planned and justified. I was initially surprised by the level of detail that went into the planning, but it all makes sense. How can you have a useful interactive map if you do not carefully consider who would be using it, why they would be using it, and how they would be using it? I have yet to write a grant application, but because of my internship I feel much more prepared to do so.

Before you get to the technical process, you also need to do the work of gathering your data. I was able to create spreadsheets to organize data for the project. WHen I started, I saw this as a fairly straightforward process, even though I was looking at Italian language sources, and I do not know Italian. But it wasn’t my lack of language that complicated the process, it was the fact that it became difficult to figure out how to arrange an entry when there was more than one name (variable A), no location (variable B), and three different weapons (Variable C). Do you just list all the weapons together, but make two different entries for the names or vice versa? If there are then multiple names AND multiple locations, do you list those all individually or have multiple entries in a single variable? Do you add more variables? Eeeek. Like with so much, in theory, organizing data in a spreadsheet is straightforward; in practice, it is a bit messier. This was a helpful experience, and because of it, I feel more confident in working on my own project. I am also forearmed for the messiness. 

I could continue, as I haven’t even gotten to the technical knowledge I learned, but because of my internship, I now understand the types and amount of work that goes into a project such as Mapping Violence. I am grateful to have had the experience to learn from Dr. Madden, and I am looking forward to venturing into this new world.