PhD defence Marlies Vermeulen

Keywords: Cartopology, Mapping, Artistic research 

"The Panoramic View of Cartopology: A journey on how to become a cartopologist"

The artistic PhD of Marlies Vermeulen explores how people experience, use, and give meaning to places in everyday life, and how these experiences can be made visible through new forms of cartography. In her research, she develops “cartopology”: a combination of cartography (the making of maps) and anthropology (the study of human behaviour, culture, and relationships to places). Her dissertation consists of 36 individual maps that together document the process of “becoming a cartopologist.” Rather than treating maps as neutral representations of space, Vermeulen approaches them as active research instruments capable of revealing hidden, embodied, and often unspoken knowledge about places. The research combines artistic practice, anthropological fieldwork, and spatial representation, with particular attention to habits, memories, social relations, and intimate connections to environments. Cartopology is presented not only as a method of mapmaking, but also as an attitude of attentiveness situated between art, science, and society. The research developed alongside her broader practice Dear Hunter and the Institute of Cartopology – Berghut Halverwege.

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