Lisa speaks with Ruth Mostern, Professor of History and Director of the World History Center at the University of Pittsburgh, to talk about the significance of place and space in the historical understanding of ourselves and our environments.

Through her groundbreaking project, the World Historical Gazetteer, Ruth enables historians and the public alike to visualize and contextualize historical events and relationships geographically, transforming static history into dynamic, place-based storytelling.

Sitting at the intersection of history, geography and technology, this episode is a must-listen for those who believe in the power of place to shape and deepen our understanding of the world.

Ruth Mostern is Professor of History and Director of the World History Center at the University of Pittsburgh and Vice President of the World History Association. She is the author of Dividing the Realm in Order to Govern: The Spatial Organization of the Song State, 960-1276 CE (Harvard Asia Center, 2011), and The Yellow River: A Natural and Unnatural History (Yale University Press, 2021), winner of the Joseph Levenson Prize from the Association for Asian Studies in 2022, co-editor of Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers (Indiana University Press, 2016), and Principal Investigator and Project Director of the World Historical Gazetteer. Ruth received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2003 and was Founding Faculty at the University of California, Merced, where she spent 13 years before moving to Pitt in 2017.

Resources:

World Historical Gazetteer: whgazetteer.org

Ruth Mostern at University of Pittsburgh: www.history.pitt.edu/people/ruth-mostern