Catherine
Jones
I am an Assistant Professor in Digital Geography at the University of Luxembourg since 2018 and since Sept 2020 I hold the position of Director of Studies for the Master programme in the Geography and Spatial Planning Department. I have a PhD in Geographies of Health and a Master of Science in Geographical Information Science (2003), both from University College London. Since the start of my career in GI Science and Digital Geography I have been interested in the public use and access of geographical information, particularly in the domains of societal health, education, cultural heritage and history as well as investigating new way in which to explore individual and collective understanding of place.
My research primarily focuses on four main themes:
- Transitions in people-place relationships – using different digital methods and geographic information I am involved in investigating our perceptions, identity, meanings, attachments and relationships with place to support understanding of well-being, inequality, our environment and cultural heritage. This has included research on the use of Social Media data, Instagram, in the context of Cultural Routes, and the role of location-based games in shaping our understanding and experience of place.
- Collaborative Mapping, Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science - collaborative mapping is a method that supports citizens in creating their own geographic information, of which crowdsourcing is one form of collaborative mapping. I have been working in this area at different geographical scales ranging from co-organising OpenStreetMap mapathons, to the European wide visualisation and analysis of cultural routes using Instagram data right down to the to the local scale community collection of place-based experiences during the PandemicWhere I have have developed a local citizen observatory and participatory platform for Luxembourg and the Greater Region using collaborative GIS to engages citizens in geographical research.
- Societal impact of Geographical technology and Geo Games - I have an ongoing interest in the role of games and gamification in shaping our understanding, meaning and relationship to place. As part of the h2020 CrossCult project we developed a game to encourage reflection on social history in cities. Also, I have been involved in a number of special issues that investigate the role of location-based games in cities (BIT and IJHCI). I am part of the spatial planning working group for the INTERREG UniGR-Center for Border Studies (Centre d'étude sur les frontières de l'Université de la Grande Région), where planning games are being used to evaluate decision-making practices. I also supervise a PHD student as part of the SURREAL project where we are investigating the role of citizens in gamified experiences to shape our understanding of social determinants of health.
- Spatial Analysis, geovisualisation and Human Computer Interaction. In this theme, I am interested in the investigation of human computer interactions between people, geographic data and technology. . My acclaimed www.Bombsight.org project, was developed with a user-centered design approach and received significant public acclaim at its launch and years later still sparks the curiosity of its user-base. In previous research, I used Eye-tracking, Location Tracking and Augmented Reality to develop new geovisualistaion interfaces for geographic data. I have a record of accomplishment linked to conducting evaluations of geo-technology to understand their impact on citizens. I am interested in developing this research strand further to: (1) explore immersive and /or tangible interfaces to understand how such interactions can be used in collaborative and immersive mapping process and placed-based knowledge acquisition and (2) investigate the Interaction between cartographic models, spatial cognition and data representations for 21st century mapping practices and devices using co-creation and HCI methods and (3) exploring the application of new technology such as virtual and augmented reality in the GIS and geography curriculum for developing immersive experiences.
For more information on my projects follow the links:
https://zesummenmaps.communitymaps.org.uk/welcome
Find me on Google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=8pcURrQAAAAJ&hl=en