Interactive maps the likes of these are often fueled by significant funding and/or significant labor. I was lucky to find some funding for this project, and much brilliant labor.
Without a doubt, much of this website would be impossible without the work of research collaborators whose coding and design skills made both the online maps on this site and print maps in the book much better than I ever could. Further, I heavily depended upon research assistants who cleaned, extended, and confirmed the details of these datasets. I am eternally grateful for their work and insights.
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I, Jen Jack Gieseking, spent over a year conducting archival research at the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Brooklyn, New York. There, I gathered detailed information from lesbian and queer publications (broadsheets, newspapers, magazines) and organizational records, and compiled these data into spreadsheets and maps. You can read further about the Data & Methods here.
Rich Donohue is a web cartographer and geographer, and supported the development of the original AEQNY maps and innovatively coded the maps now on this site, thinking carefully about mobile ready maps as well. He is Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Kentucky.
Araby Smyth is a Ph.D. student in the University of Kentucky Department of Geography. As a research assistant to this project, she confirmed organizational addresses and built the base maps for the participants’ constellations maps.
Emily Kaufman is a Ph.D. student in the University of Kentucky Department of Geography. As a research assistant to this project, she researched how to create and then created the (hopefully) actually interesting teaching and learning videos that will soon be on this website. She’s also working to edit the dataviz blog posts I wrote on my personal site so they can be integrated on this site.
Lindsey Funke attended graduate school in geography at the University of Kentucky and completed her New Maps Plus certificate in 2019. She coded the early versions of the AEQNY maps.
Erin Siodmak was hired as a research assistant to check and search for any missing addresses in the Lesbian Herstory Archives organizational records from 2014 to 2015. She was diligent and innovative, and this site is much more robust thanks to her.
Gina Stalica (Bowdoin ’15) was hired as a student research assistant to type the addresses for all of the places in publications. Her careful reading of these documents led us to discussing new patterns and trends I had not yet seen before.
Ashley Hamelin and Samantha Fischer (Trinity ’19) worked as student research assistants to read 1,400 pages of transcripts to identify every place mentioned by participants. They also took account of every place participants mentioned in their maps. She also pointed to new trends in the data and we got to have fantastic conversations of what counts as a “space.”
Julia Gorka (Trinity ’18) cleaned the organizations data file, and searched for missing addresses based on online records. Her attention to detail is forever a gift to this project.
Jeffrey Levy is GIS Program Coordinator for the Department of Geography at the University of Kentucky. Drawing on his talents and skills, he drafted all of the beautiful census maps for the book, and that have been shared on this website.
Nick Lally is Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Kentucky, and Kallista Bley is a Ph.D. candidate in geography at the University of Wisconsin. They lovingly sat by my side and drafted the stunning neighborhood maps of places that participants mentioned for the book, and which are now found on this site as well.
Jennifer Edwards and Martie Janeway (Bowdoin) photgraphed the original hand-drawn mental maps and turned them into high-res files.
Funding for this project came from the following sources, institutions, and organizations, for which I remain deeply grateful:
- 2020-2021. Research and Creative Activities Program, Office of the Vice President for Research, University of Kentucky.
- 2018. Five College Women’s Studies Research Center Fellowship, Mount Holyoke College.
- 2016, 2015. Junior Faculty Research Fellowship, Trinity Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies, Trinity College.
- 2010-2011. German Chancellor Fellowship, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
- 2009-2010. Joan Heller – Diane Bernard Fellowship in Lesbian and Gay Studies, Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS).
- 2008-2009. Dissertation Fellowship in Women’s Studies, The Institute for Citizens & Scholars (was Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation).
- 2008-2009. Proshansky Dissertation Award, Graduate Center CUNY.
- 2008-2009. Center for Place, Culture, and Politics Fellowship, Graduate Center CUNY.
