The idea that knowledge has a place is one of the central insights of the history of science. Scholarship in Science and Technology Studies and historical epistemology has demonstrated that knowledge production is embedded in local, institutional and cultural contexts – and that this embeddedness shapes not only the circulation of knowledge but also its very content. For a discipline that has made the analysis of space its defining concern, this insight demands particular reflexivity: Under what spatial and institutional conditions has geographical knowledge been produced, and what has that meant for its substance?
In recent years, the history of geography has established itself as a research field that pursues these questions systematically – moving beyond a disciplinary history confined to intellectual biographies and the chronicle of canonical works. The focus has shifted to the practices, sites and constellations in which geographical knowledge was produced, negotiated and transmitted, as well as to the categories – such as space, region or landscape – that not only described but actively shaped what came to be regarded as worth knowing, and which bodies of knowledge were rendered invisible in the process. Budapest as the conference venue reflects a deliberate positioning: Central Europe represents scientific-historical constellations with the potential to productively unsettle established periodisations and centre–periphery models in the history of geography.
The Working Group on the History of Geography invites scholars from Geography, History, History of Science, History of Knowledge and adjacent disciplines to the annual conference on 3 and 4 September 2026 at the Eötvös József Collegium of ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Ménesi út 11-13, 1118 Budapest, Hungary. We welcome contributions across a range of scales – from the biography of individual actors to the analysis of transnational circulations, from the micro-history of an institution to the entangled history of geographical concepts across linguistic boundaries. We particularly welcome contributions that bring hitherto underrepresented regions, languages or knowledge traditions into the history of geography. Thematic foci include, but are not limited to:
- Scientific traditions in centres and peripheries; the role of borderlands and other sites of knowledge production
- Actors beyond established institutions in the global core of knowledge production
- Colonial and postcolonial knowledge regimes
- Material cultures of geographical knowledge
- Transfers and translations between national geographical traditions
- The relationship between disciplinary history of geography and general historiography
There is no participation fee for the conference. On 5 September, an optional historical and geographical excursion will take place, with costs to be covered by the participants.
Submission of abstracts
Please submit abstracts of no more than 300 words by 15 June 2026 to Ferenc Gyuris (ferenc.gyuris@ttk.elte.hu) and Norman Henniges (norman.henniges@geo.hu-berlin.de). Notification of acceptance will be provided by 30 June 2026.
We look forward to receiving your contributions.
Ferenc Gyuris, Tobit Nauheim, Norman Henniges
Programme · 3–4 September 2026 · Budapest
International conference at the Eötvös József Collegium, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, organised in cooperation with the Working Group on the History of Geography (Germany), the Department of Geography at Humboldt University of Berlin, the Department of Social and Economic Geography at ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, the Social and Economic Geography Division of the Hungarian Geographical Society, with the support of the HRP Foundation of the Berlin Geographical Society.
Organisers: Ferenc Gyuris (Budapest), Norman Henniges (Berlin), Róbert Győri (Budapest) & Tobit Nauheim (Bonn)
Thursday, 3 September 2026
Eötvös József Collegium of ELTE Eötvös Loránd University,
Budapest, Ménesi út 11–13, 1118 Budapest, Hungary.
Opening | 10.00 – 10.10
Ferenc Gyuris (Budapest, Hungary) & Norman Henniges (Berlin, Germany)
Short Presentation & Guided Tour | 10.10 – 11.00
Ferenc Gyuris (Budapest, Hungary) & Róbert Győri (Budapest, Hungary)
Eötvös Collegium as a Place of Geographical Knowledge Production
Keynote | 11:00 – 11:30
Johannes Mattes (Halle, Germany) & Norman Henniges (Berlin, Germany)
Epistemic Frontiers: Mapping Knowledge, Ignorance, and Power in 19th-Century Research on the Arctic and Africa
Break | 11:30 – 11:45
Session 1. Geographical Imaginations and Material Cultures | 11:45 – 13:15
Alessandro Ricci (Bergamo, Italy)
Monumental Depicted Maps: Material Culture in the History of Cartography
Maurizio Zignale (Bergamo, Italy)
Grand Tour Diaries as Products of the Material Culture of Geographical Knowledge
Yunran Zhang (Heidelberg, Germany)
Railway Posters without Railways: Landscapes and Maps in Advertisements of the k.k. Austrian State Railways in the Early Twentieth Century
Lunch Break | 13:15 – 14:30
Session 2. Geographical Networks and Circulating Knowledge| 14:30 – 16:00
Maximilian Reimann (Munich, Germany)
Periphery and Center: Circulating Knowledge at the American Geographical Society, 1851–1914
Róbert Győri (Budapest, Hungary), Steven Jobbitt (Thunder Bay, Canada) & Charles W. J. Withers (Edinburgh, UK)
Expert Geographers during and after the Great War: The Parallel Lives of B. C. Wallis (1878–1960) and Ferenc Fodor (1887–1962)
Dominic Keyßner (Erfurt, Germany)
Mapping Across Borders? A Closer Look at the Cooperation between Cartographia Budapest and the VEB Hermann Haack Gotha
Break | 16:00 – 16:15
Session 3. Geographical Knowledge and Territorial Identities | 16:15 – 17:45
Nicola Gabellieri (Genoa, Italy) & Daniele Tinterri (Venice, Italy)
From the Border to the Plan-Reliefs: Alpine Conflicts and Territorial Geographic Representations between the Republic of Venice and the Habsburg Empire in the Eighteenth Century
Alex Stogiannos (Corfu, Greece)
Political Geography and Geopolitics: On Rudolf Kjellén’s Reception of Friedrich Ratzel
Lishi You (Jinhua, China)
From Petite Patrie to Grande Patrie: Histoire-Géographie and Territorial Identity in Republican France after 1871
Friday, 4 September 2026
Session 4. Geographical Institutions and Transformations | 09:30 – 11:00
Bálint Hilbert (Budapest, Hungary)
Institutionalising Geography in an Unequal Empire: Challenges of Building Czech, Polish and Croatian Geographies in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1849–1918
Hilbrand Wouters (Konstanz, Germany)
The Region as Ambition. West German Archaeological Museums as Mediators of Historical Geographic Coherence (1933–1970)
Leonie Paauwe & Michiel van Meeteren (Utrecht, Netherlands)
“We Wish to Raise a Number of Societally Relevant Problems!”: Staff-student Interaction in Reshaping Dutch Development Geography in the 1970s
Break | 11:00 – 11:20
Session 5. Political Geographies and Nation-Building | 11:20 – 12:50
Róbert Balogh (Budapest, Hungary)
Constructing the „Carpathian Basin“: Geopolitics, Crisis Awareness, and Anthropogenic Landscape Modification (1910–1945)
Guilherme Ribeiro (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
Nationalism and Multilingualism in the Estado Novo: Orlando Valverde, a Geotranslator in the Boletim Geográfico (1943–1945)
Raphaël Pelletier (Québec, Canada)
The Québécois Geographers and the ‘National Question’: The Independence Movement as a Defining Factor in Disciplinary History (1959–1972)
Break | 12:50 – 14:00
Session 6. (Post-) Colonial Cartographies and Geographies | 14:00 – 15:30
Martino Haver Longo (Florence, Italy) & Lorenzo Dolfi (Vercelli, Italy)
Commercial Exploration and Colonial Projections: Italian Geographical Knowledge on Yemen and the Red Sea, 1877–1930s
Judith Verweijen & Michiel van Meeteren (Utrecht, Netherlands)
The Ironies of Militarized and Colonial Cartography: Exploring the Mythologies of the Minembwe Map
Sophie Bijleveld & Michiel van Meeteren (Utrecht, Netherlands)
Ambiguous Post-Colonialities: (Re-)Negotiating Geography between Universitas Gadjah Mada (Indonesia) and Utrecht University (the Netherlands)
Break | 15:30 – 15:50
Working group meeting: Organisational matters & discussion | 15:50 – 17:00
Saturday, 5 September 2026
Field trip. Departure from Budapest at 8 a.m. by private bus. Estimated costs: 65–70 euros per person (excluding dinner). Scheduled stops:
- Kecskemét and its surroundings – Truth spots in the countryside: Field observations of Great Plain agricultural towns as products of a unique trajectory of urban development in rural Hungary. What has happened since the region’s Ottoman conquest in the 16th century and why does that matter for the history of human geography as an academic discipline in Hungary?
- Tiszaföldvár – The institutional infrastructure of geographical knowledge production beyond universities and research institutes: How can countryside museums contribute in the 21st century? Case study: Tiszazug Geographical Museum, Hungary’s oldest geographical museum and the 2026 Museum of the Year in Hungary in the town of Tiszaföldvár
- Szarvas – What happens before entering the university gate? Shedding new light on pre-tertiary education’s less discussed impact on leading geographers’ scientific careers. Case study: Tibor Mendöl, the interwar pioneer of urban geography in Hungary, and his secondary school years in the town of Szarvas
Return to Budapest at approximately 9 p.m.
