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SOME NEWS

Miniature updates from 2016 onward


2026



MayPresenting at the Theoretical Archaeology Group conference tag#RESIST 2026. Envisioning Seneca Village is participating with two conference presentations on Saturday, 30 May: “Envisioning Seneca Village: Unfreezing the Past in a Digital Landscape. Or, Save As…” during session 6, “CTRL+Z: Resisting Permanence through the Digital” and “Envisioning Seneca Village: Rediscovering Complexity and Resisting the Same Old Story” (presented by Meredith B. Linn) during an all-day session devoted to the archaeology of New York City.

April Celebrating the conclusion of this year’s Keating Visiting Architect program on 14 April with a public lecture given by Uma Bhandaram. Earlier in the day, Uma will also lead a workshop for students interested in using GIS-based tools to explore some of the decision making processes employed by NYC Parks.

A (very) short piece included in a (very) substantial book. “You and Me both, Bucky” is published within Mark Wasiuta’s The Archival Exhibition: A Decade of Research at the Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery, 2006-2016.

MarchDelighted to moderate the Data x Design Artists Panel at BRIC in Brooklyn on 28 March. This year’s show centers around the theme of Echo{logies}, which promises an interesting conversation between the city’s open data resources and our thinking about change.

On Saturday, 27 March, students will be joining this year’s Keating Visiting Architect at the Barnard + Columbia Architecture department for an Urban Canopy Data Walk to learn about the NYC Parks tree census.

Presenting Envisioning Seneca Village at the Harlem School for the Arts on 7 March.

February Kicking off a series of three events with this year’s Keating Visiting Architect, Uma Bhandaram, at the Barnard + Columbia Architecture Department. The program begins with a meet-and-greet luncheon and guest lecture for students on the 24th. More events to come!

January Spring teaching: A brand-new undergraduate introductory GIS course called Data, Mapping, and Spatial Analysis offered for nonmajors by the Urban Studies program at Barnard. Alongside this new course, I’m teaching Advanced GIS which is now a graduate-level course in Urban Studies as well as a newly revamped Special Topics course in the Architecture department, Urban Datascapes.

8-10 January: In Chicago for the American Historical Society conference, accepting the Roy Rosenzweig Prize for Creativity in Digital History on behalf of the Envisioning Seneca Village team. 


2025



December6 Dec: Participating in “From Addisleigh Park to Seneca Village: Commemorating Communities, Vanished and Preserved” at Yeh Art Gallery, St John’s University.

2 Dec: Presenting ESV at Barnard College event “Celebrating Envisioning Seneca Village” co-sponsored by the college’s Digital Humanities Center, Empirical Reasoning Center, and Design Center.
November 19 - 23 Nov: At the Social Science History Association annual conference in Chicago, IL. Participating in a roundtable on Dispossession Geographies on Saturday, 22 Nov. On the same day, two papers from the ESV team will be presented during a session on GIS and Archaeology of New York City: “Envisioning Seneca Village: Visual and Narrative Storytelling Using Archaeological Records” and “Envisioning Seneca Village: A GIS Repository of Archival and Archaeological Records.”

7 Nov: Respondent and panelist for an author-meets-critic session on Robert CH Sweeny’s Working Papers: Property in early 20th century Montreal (pdf available here). Hosted by the Spatial History & Historical GIS working group’s online seminar series.
October Envisioning Seneca Village received the Roy Rosenzweig Prize for Creativity in Digital History from the American Historical Society and the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.

Proud to serve as co-chair for the Architectural League of New York’s Beaux Arts Ball 2025: Pattern Recognition. The benefit event is 3 October in Brooklyn.
SeptemberThe Envisioning Seneca Village team celebrated the 200th Anniversary of Seneca Village at a Founders’ Day event hosted by Mother AME Zion Church and the Central Park Conservancy on Sunday, 14 September in Harlem. Marking the occasion, updated annotations and notes on the history of AME Zion Church and Cemetery as well as new renderings of the location and building were added to the Tour through the Visualization, and we created a new double-sided PDF about AME Zion at Seneca Village, “Envisioning AME Zion,” available here.

Fall teaching: Advanced Architectural Design I and Advanced GIS at Barnard.
JulyJoining the faculty at Barnard College in the Architecture department and Urban Studies program.

June “Seneca Village, Envisioned” published in Urban Omnibus.

May Envisioning Seneca Village honored as Best Digital Project of 2024 by the Victorian Society of New York. 

April Speaking at Mapping Spaces, Embodying Territories: Spatial Humanities and GIScience Across the Disciplines, a two-day conference ( 3-4 April) at St. Louis University. The talk will focus and reflect on Envisioning Seneca Village.

MarchEnvisioning Seneca Village receives award as Winner of the Digital/Interactive Map Category, 2024, in the 52nd Annual CaGIS Map Design Competition.

Imagery from Envisioning Seneca Village featured on CUNY TV. See the Urban U episode here. 

Envisioning Seneca Village featured at the Central Park Conservancy’s event to launch “Seneca Village: Toward a Permanent Commemoration” at the Schomburg Center in NYC. 
FebruaryPresenting Envisioning Seneca Village as part of the Dyckman Farmhouse Museum spring lecture series on 26 February. The talk is virtual; more information and zoom registration are here.

JanuarySpring teaching: Urban Datascapes special topics seminar at Barnard and Columbia Colleges Architecture Department; Advanced GIS at Barnard College Urban Studies program; Data, Mapping, and Spatial Speculation at the Cooper Union Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture. 

Meisterlin Projects launches Mapping 101, with a collection of GIS-related software tutorials and much more material to come.



2024



November Envisioning Seneca Village featured in the Winter 2025 issue of Barnard Magazine, “A Collaborative Re-envisioning of Seneca Village.”

October 31 October - 3 November: At Social Science History Association conference in Toronto, Canada. Presenting two papers: “Visualizing Seneca Village: Building an Informed and Collaborative 3D Virtual Model of a Displaced 19th-Century Black Community” and “Updates from Mapping Historical New York.”

Version 2 of Mapping Historical New York launches. The new version is expanded to include all five
of the city’s boroughs for 1850, 1880, 1910, and 1940, along with new visualization and customization options.

September Fall teaching: Advanced GIS at Barnard College Urban Studies program.

July New Paper: “Population Density in Nineteenth-Century American Urbanism,” coauthored with G. Baics and C. Arsen, is available online in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers. Update: The article is available in print in Volume 114, Issue 9.

June Launching Meisterlin Projects, a research and design practice focused around cartographic analysis and spatial representation.

I have resigned my position at Columbia GSAPP effective 30 June. While grateful for the time well spent at the school, I am looking forward to returning to the forms of practice and pedagogy that I have missed so much. New announcements to come.

Launching Envisioning Seneca Village, an interactive 3D model of the 19th-Century community demolished to form Central Park.

April Presenting Mapping Historical New York as a colloquy participant at the Urban Affairs Association conference in New York.

March Moderating the Architectural League’s “Current Work: Revisiting Branch Libraries” at the Cooper Union in New York on 13 March.

JanuarySpring teaching: Advanced Spatial Analysis and Digital Restructuring of Urban Space at Columbia GSAPP.



2023



NovemberAt Social Science History Association conference in Washington DC to present “Mapping Irregular Settlements in Mid-19th-Century New York” with G Baics.

Presenting a paper at Regional Studies Association Winter Conference in London: “Broken Circuit: An Optimistic Framework for Applied Data-Driven Research on Urbanism.”

OctoberWith G Baics and D Miller, presenting Mapping Historical New York (“The Digital Atlas as a Resource for Research”) at the biennial conference of the Urban History Association in Pittsburgh.

JanuarySpring teaching: M.S. in Urban Planning thesis and capstone at Columbia GSAPP.



2022



NovemberPresenting “Logics of Business Placement in Mid-19th-Century New York” at Social Science History Association conference (online) in November, with G Baics.
SeptemberFeatured in City of Aspiration: 150 Ideas from New Yorkers for Building a More Equitable NYC from the Center for an Urban Future.

Learning Critical GIS: a Workbook is going live for students (and teachers) of context-driven, urban GIS. 

Fall teaching: Geographic Information Systems and M.S. in Urban Planning thesis and capstone at Columbia GSAPP.
August "Remapping John Snow's Cholera Map, London, 1854" featured as the Key Visual of the 7th Lindau Meeting on Economic Sciences.

The Nomad Collection minting starts 22 August at earth.domains.
Spring Mapping Historical New York receives Best Interactive/Digital map award and ties for Best in Show in the CaGIS 2021 Map Design competition.


2021



NovemberParticipating (remotely) at Social Science History Association conference. Presenting recent work with G Baics on measuring spatial heterogeneity in 19th-C US cities on 12 November, and roundtable discussion with the MHNY project team on 11 November.
OctoberMapping Historical New York: A Digital Atlas will launch with an event on 27 October. Register here.
September Fall Teaching: Geographic Information Systems at Columbia GSAPP.
AugustMapping Historical New York project (with the Center for Spatial Research at GSAPP and the Columbia’s History Department) receives new grant from the Gardiner Foundation.
JanuaryParticipating in Emergency Urbanism webinar, hosted by CU Global Center Amman on 13 January.

Spring teaching: Advanced Spatial Analysis and M.S. in Urban Planning thesis at Columbia GSAPP.


2020


NovemberReflected on the evolution of Tony Hsieh’s Downtown Project in Las Vegas in the New York Times on 28 November.

Speaking at GSAPP MSAAD’s Techno-Critical Assemblies series on 12 November. The talk: “Default Settings.”
SeptemberFall Teaching: Geographic Information Systems and M.S. in Urban Planning thesis at Columbia GSAPP.
AugustOffering critical GIS tips in “GIS is not a Software: A Critical Primer and Tactical Glossary” for GSAPP students over zoom on 6 August.
March210 Cities in San Diego featured with Human Geography’s Cartography Spotlight, in the journal’s 2020 art competition. 
JanuaryParticipating in a Day of Concern on climate change, organized by the students at Friends’ Seminary high school in NYC on 7 January.

On leave during Spring semester.


2019



November Ways of Knowing Cities edited by Laura Kurgan and Dare Brawley (Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, 2019), including a chapter “Cartographies of Distance,” is launched along with several other new titles at Columbia GSAPP on 22 November.

In Chicago, 21-24 Nov for the Social Science History Association conference: Discussant for the “Emerging Methods: Historical Cartography” panel on Friday, 22 November. Also presented “Testing Wirth: Exploring Population Size and Density in the 19th-Century American City” with G Baics.

Participated in the Buell Center’s day-long event “The Green New Deal: A Public Assembly” at the Queens Museum in NYC on 17 November.

The exhibition 210 Cities in San Diego opens at the Lightroom Gallery, with a public lecture, at Carleton University on 4 November.
October Digital Urbanisms: a day-long conference organized by Leah, at Columbia GSAPP on 11 October.
September Delivering a public lecture “Tracing, Charting, Mapping, Drawing: Analytical Cartography as Historical GIS“ at New Directions and Connections in British Urban History at New York University on 13 September.

Fall Teaching: Geographic Information Systems at Columbia GSAPP.
June Delivering a faculty presentation at Columbia GSAPP’s 2019 Reunion festivities (and celebrating one of my alumni reunion classes) on 1 June.
MaySummer Teaching:  “Mapping for the Urban Humanities: A Summer Institute,” 28 May - 6 June at Columbia’s Center for Spatial Research.

Honored to receive a 2019 Presidential Teaching Award from Columbia University at Commencement on 22 May.

Presenting and discussing during a panel discussion on “Rethinking the [NYC] Grid” at the CUNY Graduate Center, with Gergely Baics and others on 6 May.

April At American Association of Geographers 2019 conference in Washington, DC: Presenting during the panel session “Pushing the Boundaries of Regional Infrastructure: The Washington DC Region in Focus” and very excited to serve as discussant for the panel session “Urban Historical GIS” — both are on 6 April.

Delivering a position paper “Revisiting Analytical Cartography as Critical GIS” at Doing Critical GIS (a Univ of Maryland Baltimore County pre-AAG workshop) on 1 April in Baltimore.

March Delivering “Cartographies of Distance and Difference” (public talk) at Columbia Global Center | Beijing on 17 March. (A blog post after-the-fact with a couple photos here.)

February Another installment in the Gotham Center’s expanded series on the myths surrounding the NYC grid, with G Baics: “Myth #10: Example of Laissez-Faire Planning.”

January Spring Teaching: Advanced Spatial Analysis, Urban Datascapes, and M.S. in Urban Planning thesis at Columbia GSAPP.


2018



DecemberShort piece on the Gotham Center for New York City History’s blog, in their series debunking myths about the NYC street grid: “Myth 9: System of Block and Lot Divisions” with G Baics.

NovemberDelivering the keynote address at Hofstra University’s celebration of Geography Awareness Week on 15 November. The talk: “Digital Cartographies of Everyday Life.”

October Presenting “Cartographies of Access, Opportunity, and Difference” on 25 October at the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning 58th Annual Conference in Buffalo, NY.

September Fall teaching: Geographic Information Systems and M.S. in Urban Planning thesis at Columbia GSAPP.

JuneNew essay in The Avery Review: "Not Yet #AfterRikers: Looking for #JusticeInDesign," a review of the Van Alen Institute's Justice In Design report.

Speaking at the Athena conference “The Strip Urbanism & Beyond: Las Vegas from the Inside Out” on 11 June at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, co-sponsored by the Center for the Future of Places and the degree program in Urbanism Studies.

MayNew on ARPA Journal, Issue 5 Conflicts of Interest: "Research Ransoms: On Expelling Undue Influence" LM in conversation with Samantha Parsons from UnKoch My Campus.

Speaking at Unlayerings: A Critical Conversation on Historical Geography on 17 May (keynote session) and the 18th (roundtable) of May at Dartmouth College in Hanover, VT. The talk: "Cartographic Distance and the Urban Humanities."

April Presenting "Distanced: Remapping Access" at the American Association of Geographers conference in New Orleans, 10-14 April as part of a special session on Mapping Urban In/Justice .
MarchParticipating in the Impact Data Lab workshop 11-14 March in Amman, organized by Visualizing Impact and Studio-X Amman, where I'll serve as a mentor and advisor to the design teams.

Giving a public talk "Difference and Distance" at Turbo on 12 March in Amman, Jordan, organized by Studio-X Amman.
FebruaryParticipating in VizTech: Converging Pedagogies and Practices at GSAPP on 16 February.

Speaking at the Ways of Knowing Cities symposium (talk: "Cartographies of Distance") hosted by the Center for Spatial Research at Columbia in New York on 9 February.

JanuarySpring Teaching: Advanced Spatial Analysis, Digital Restructuring of Urban Space, and M.S. in Urban Planning thesis at Columbia GSAPP.


2017



November“The Grid as Algorithm for Land Use: a Reappraisal of the 1811 Manhattan Grid” is now available online in Planning Perspectives.

Presenting two papers at the annual meeting of the Social Science History Association conference in Montreal, both on 1 November. One on methodologies of H-GIS, the other on residential (in)stability in industrializing Copenhagen.
October Presenting on urban planning's engagement with mass imprisonment at the annual meeting of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning in Denver, CO on 14 October.
September Speaking in GSAPP's Lectures in Planning Series. The talk: "Critical Distance: Notes on GIS from the Ground" is 12 September.

Fall teaching: Geographic Information Systems and M.S. in Urban Planning Thesis at Columbia GSAPP.

AugustSpeaking on "Maps & Mayhem" at the Lady Science Forum hosted by BioDigital at the New York Public Library Grand Central Branch Library on 30 August. The event is "Planning for Sharing: The Science of Urban Design."
JuneSpeaking at the University of Copenhagen on "Density & Connectivity: Land Use in Midnineteenth-Century New York" with G Baics on 19 June.
April Keynote speaker with Gergely Baics at "Humanizing Data: Data, Humanities, and the City" a day-long symposium organized by the NYU Urban Democracy Lab on 8 April.
March Speaking and moderating at "Big Data, Urban Data" organized by the APA Metro student representatives, at GSAPP on 31 March.

February "Density & Connectivity: Land Use in Midnineteenth-Century New York" on view at Barnard College's McCagg Gallery 20 February - 3 March.

Speaking at GeoNYC's "No One Ever Said Mapping Time Easy" on 13 Feb.
 January


2016



December Speaking at the SVA Design Research, Writing, and Criticism lecture series on 6 December in NYC.
November Cher finissage event in Copenhagen on 11 November, to close out the year-long project for the Oslo Architecture Triennale 2016: After Belonging. Join us that afternoon at the Danish Architecture Center.

OctoberSpeaking on 29 October at the Columbia Women's Leadership Conference on intersectionality and the production of gendered space in cities.

"Zoning Before Zoning: Land Use & Density in Mid-19th-Century New York" with G Baics (article in AAAG) reported in The Atlantic's CityLab by Richard Florida.

Presenting follow-up research on the NYC street grid with G Baics at the Urban History Association 2016 conference in Chicago, 13-16 October.

SeptemberPresenting at the Architectural League of New York's Annual Student Program on 24 September. A full day of diverse practices. More info and registration here. 

Presentation and Panel Discussion at the AIA Center for Architecture on 19 September. The topic: "Designing for People Using Evidence." More info and RSVP here.

The Oslo Architecture Triennale 2016: After Belonging opened on 8 September and will remain on view until 27 November. If you're in Norway, check out the Cher photo booth! The prototype-as-provocation, Cher officially launched at the OAT opening. Check it out at cher.city (desktop or mobile browser).

Fall Teaching: M.S. in Urban Planning thesis at Columbia GSAPPJunePresenting Cher at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design on 22 June in Copenhagen, Denmark.
At the SculptureCenter on 15 June. " In/On Construction: Leslie Hewitt and Leah Meisterlin in Conversation" to discuss Leslie's Collective Stance at the Center.
Speaking at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Met Breuer on 8 June  in NYC as part of "In Our Time: The Sharing Movement." 

Summer Teaching "Mapping for theUrban Humanities: A Summer Bootcamp," a summer intensive course on digital mapping for faculty, with the Center for Spatial Research at Columbia.

"Zoning Before Zoning: Land Use & Density in Midnineteenth-Century New York" (with G Baics) now available online in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers.

Very proud and excited to join the Metropolitan New York Library Council Board of Trustees.

Leah will join the full-time faculty at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation starting in the fall 2016 semester
May Panel discussion to launch The Architecture Lobby's Asymmetric Labors: The Economy of Architecture in Theory & Practice at the Venice Biennale vernissage: 3PM on Friday, 27 May at the New Zealand Exhibition.

Presenting pedagogical lessons from Datascapes & the Informal City at Barnard's "Teaching through Technology: Faculty Reflections" on Thursday, 5 May.
SpringTeaching the Rikers Studio in Architecture and Urban Design, with the Rikers Education Program at Columbia University's Center for Justice—a four-week course for Columbia students and 16-to-17-year-olds at Rikers Island.
March Presenting "Alternative and Pluralistic Mappings of the City" at Reading the City 2 at the London School of Economics on the 18th.
FebruaryPecha Kucha presentation on urban planning practice at Columbia University GSAPP on the 18th.
January"Cher" selected In Residence" Intervention Strategies for the 2016 Oslo Architectural Triennale.


© Leah Meisterlin, 2006-2026