Recent migration and mobility have made human regions so diverse, in so many different ways, that conventional social science concepts and theories sometimes struggle to make sense of what is happening. For example, concepts like ‘cultural diversity’ – which were once understood in terms of large, purportedly homogenous ‘cultural communities’ – are now understood as multi-dimensional constructs, with groups fragmented into kaleidoscopes of racial, gender, sexual, linguistic, religious, wealth, legal-status, and other differences. As a result, social scientists are developing new ways to picture, perceive and apprehend complex forms of socio-economic diversity in engaging ways. In this seminar I will first highlight the introduce a prototype immersive data visualization tool I have been centrally involved in developing under the working title ‘MULTIVIZ’ – short for ‘multidimensional visualization’. The purpose of MULTIVIZ is to lower the bar for accessing complex, multidimensional geospatial datasets in order to make sense of population diversity and change within and around cities.

Alan Gamlen is a political and population geographer, and an expert on human migration and mobility. He is a Professor in the School of Regulation and Global Governance at The Australian National University. He is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow and is currently leading an ARC Linkage Project on the topic of Diaspora Humanitarianism.

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