Toward a virtual research environment for the spatial humanities: heiMAP

This article describes the context and design of heiMAP, a virtual research environment (VRE) currently under development at Heidelberg University. heiMAP is aimed at users from a wide spectrum of disciplines within the Humanities, allowing them to collaborate and share data using space as their common frame of reference by way of a collaborative web platform. We first set out the challenges that spatial research in the Humanities poses for such a working platform, including but not limited to reflecting the often heterogeneous and imperfect nature of Humanities data in a Geographic Information System (GIS). Next, we give an overview of some existing VREs and detail where heiMAP fits into this context and show what makes it a worthwhile addition to the existing research landscape. Finally, we revisit the initially outlined challenges and showcase heiMAP’s approaches to address them.