About Me

Hi I'm Ellen! I am a student, a geographer, a designer, a thinker, and an explorer. I love telling stories with data.

I have never been one to simply accept the way things are. When someone tells me a "fact", I always want to know where it came from and what the exceptions are. To clarify, I am not one of those people who is always looking for proof. Rather, I am always looking for a new perspective. This is because I value the descriptive over the prescriptive, and- I am about to make my liberal arts education painfully obvious here- I am hyperaware of the influences that culture, society, politics, and media have on what we consider to be "common sense."

I love the way data can shape opinions, inspire actions, and solve problems. And while it is easy for objectively true data to tell subjective stories, I am inspired by the way careful data storytelling can make complex data understandable and accessible to a wider audience. In particular, I love the way interactive designs can encourage multiple interpretations of the same data. When you are trying to solve a problem, two perspectives are always better than one, right?

So, what does this have to do with radical cartography? Maps are just about everywhere: on our phones, on our walls, in our newspapers, on our subway cars. They are constantly feeding us one-sided data, whether we recognize it or not. The problem is, maps are presented to us as The Truth, but spatial data be re-interpreted through different lenses to reveal multiple and overlapping Truths.

My interest in interactive mapping comes from a desire to not just represent multiple perspectives in a single cartography, but to allow exploration and the discovery of infinite new perspectives. As the Car-Tac Collective so eloquently puts it:

"Even though the map is not the territory, to make maps is to organize oneself, to generate new connections and to be able to transform the material and immaterial conditions in which we find ourselves immersed. It isn't the territory but it definitely produces territory."

Want to know more? Check out my resume.