In this paper we outline and recruit new fellows for our forthcoming NEH Community Deep Mapping Institute. The NEH Community Deep Mapping institute is a hybrid 12-month virtual and in-person institute running from January 2025 through December 2025.

Deep maps integrate information and representations about space, time, architecture, material culture, environment, and community knowledge into a spatially and temporally scaled digital platform that affords open-ended exploration of a particular time and place (Bodenhamer, Corrigan, Harris 2013; Ridge, Lafreniere, Nesbit 2013). Deep maps are discursive resources that can be designed to visualize changes in human-environmental relationships over time and to accommodate multiple voices in the creation of community-based narratives. Over the past decade, alongside the growth of digital and spatial humanities scholarship, researchers from a range of humanities fields have succeeded in developing disciplinary-specific theoretical approaches to deep maps. However, the potential of deep mapping and recognition of its broader intellectual impacts in the humanities have not yet been fully realized because of the lack of transdisciplinary and public collaboration. This institute, will, for the first time, bring together an otherwise disparate group of scholars and professionals to expand the scope and refine the practices of doing deep mapping together.

The Institute will focus on expanding the scope and practice of deep mapping by integrating public-facing and transdisciplinary scholarship into the spatial humanities. Our aim is to move from the established theories and concepts of deep mapping towards developing a foundation of practice with a specific emphasis on supporting community histories. Institute Fellows will receive instruction from leading experts in the digital and spatial humanities and a wide-range of heritage fields on the use of advanced spatial and digital technologies and visualization/interpretive techniques. Working individually or in teams, Fellows will apply their new skills towards the creation of a prototype deep map using data drawn from their own active research programs.

The NEH Community Deep Mapping Institute is drawing together a group of participants who have shared interests in the digital and spatial humanities, as well as individual expertise in archaeology, geography, history, heritage, interpretation, public history, and community-based research. The institute has four central objectives 1) Train new and established scholars and professionals in the use and integration of advanced geospatial tools to advance approaches to doing deep mapping. 2) Establish best practices for creating public-facing deep maps through community-based research, design, and evaluation processes. 3) Determine methods for, and approaches to, applying augmented and mobile technologies that create immersive experiences built upon the robust historical spatial data infrastructures that form the basis of many current deep mapping projects such as the Keweenaw Time Traveler and Hamtramck Spatial Archaeology Project. 4) Demonstrate how transdisciplinary collaborations will contribute to building more inclusive communities of practice across academic fields and between academic-based scholars and non-academic heritage practitioners.

This institute's key focus is the 'doing of deep mapping'. As an expected outcome, all institute participants will build a prototype (or more advanced) community-centered, public-facing deep map in an area of their interest. Fellows will leave with the tools, resources, and a network of experts that will support continued development of their deep map.