Dr Gethin Rees

Gethin Rees, Lead Curator of Digital Mapping at the British Library
Position
Lead Curator, Digital Mapping
Specialism
Geographical Information Systems (GIS), digital mapping, visualisation, full-stack software development
Department
Collections

Gethin’s role includes helping to manage the non-print legal deposit of digital maps and coordinating the Georeferencer crowd-sourcing project.

He is interested in helping research projects to get the most out of geospatial data and tools. Before taking up his current role he worked in a digital humanities role on two collaborative history projects funded by the ERC, Beyond Boundaries and Mapping the Jewish Communities of the Byzantine Empire, and as a software developer.

His PhD on South Asian archaeology (University of Cambridge) made use of GIS for spatial analysis and data management.

Digital mapping offers great potential to help people discover the collections of the British Library. Gethin seeks to tap that potential through co-coordinating the Pelagios Visualisation activity.

He is principle investigator of the AHRC-funded Locating a National Collection project.

Publications

Chapters and articles

  • 'The Bhaja Stupas: Henry Cousens’ View' in Buddhism: Origins, Traditions and Contemporary Life, ed by S.S. May and J. Igunma (London: British Library, 2019)

  • With N. de Lange and A. Panayotov, ‘Mapping the Jewish Communities of the Byzantine Empire using GIS’ in Migration, Diaspora and Identity in the Near East from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, ed by A. Zerbin and J. Yoo (London: Ashgate, 2018)

  • With F. Yoneda, ‘Celibate Monks and Foetus-stealing Gods: Buddhism and Pregnancy at the Jetavana Monastery, Shravasti, India’, World Archaeology 45.2 (2013)

 An up-to-date list of publications can be found on Gethin Rees' entry on academia.edu.  

Books

  • With G. Michell, Buddhist Rock-cut Monasteries of the Western Ghats (Delhi: Jaico, 2017)

Projects

A screenshot of the British Library's Georeferencer.

Georeferencer

Help us make our maps fully searchable and viewable using online geotechnologies.

All projects