Plotting the Oceans: Stories of powerful maps and their makers

Description

Step into the world of exploration, science, and discovery as Professor Hamylton brings to life the remarkable stories behind some of history’s most influential maps and map makers. 

Maps are powerful. They carry messages via their carefully crafted designs, and work to shape society’s understanding of, and relationship with, the natural world. 

Charles Darwin mapped the world’s coral reefs to support a theory about how they formed at a time when they represented a mortal danger to seafarers. In doing so, he developed ways of reasoning with maps that shaped his eventual theory of evolution. 

Drawing on her own global adventures as a mapmaker, Professor Hamylton will uncover what lies behind – and beyond – the maps that shape how we see our world in a fun, engaging and thought-provoking tour of geographical story-telling and insights.

Cost: RGSSA Members $5, non-members $10

Sarah Hamylton is internationally recognised as a leading coastal geographer with over twenty years of experience mapping, monitoring and modelling a range of marine and coastal environments. 

As an Associate Professor at the University of Wollongong, Sarah is Director of the Spatial Analysis Laboratory. She co-leads a coastal research group of more than 30 students & staff who collect and analyse data from drones and satellites to understand contemporary coastal management challenges. 

Sarah has written over 130 scientific publications and worked in Fiji, Australia, the Red Sea, The Seychelles, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Belize. Her maps have helped establish marine protected areas and been used in the European Court of Human Rights and her models of how climate change impacts coral reefs have informed national coastal management policies

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Access to the Institute Building is via the external ramp on the Kintore Ave entrance or via the internal ramp between the Institute Building and the Spence Wing (opposite the Treasures Wall).

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