King's College London

The spatial humanities have evolved much in the last ten years or so, and much of this evolution has been driven by project and problem-based GIS applications. It is argued here that the field lacks a theoretical framework analogous to Critical GIS in human geography. I argue that, just as Critical GIS drew on the intellectual hinterlands of human and hybrid geography, so must the spatial humanities draw on the intellectual hinterlands of how humanities discourse have always formed and transmitted concepts of place. Rhetoric, and especially the rhetorical devices of ekphrasis are given as an example of this; a project co-led by the author, the Heritage Gazetteer of Cyprus, is given as an example of how the digitzation of (humanistic) place has been operationalized.