Core Team
Jane M. Jacobs
Principal Investigator and Professor of Social Sciences (Urban Studies)
Professor Jane M. Jacobs research is in the urban studies field with a particular interest in the cultural aspects of the production and consumption of the built environment. She has served on the editorial boards of numerous journals such as Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, Cultural Studies Review, Social and Cultural Geographies, and Annals of the Association of American Geographers, and Antipode, to name a few. She was a founding member of Melbournes Institute of Postcolonial Studies and currently serves as the Head of Studies for the Urban Studies Department at Yale-NUS College. Having written on the cultural politics of heritage, critical colonial and postcolonial urbanisms, and the relationship between society and culture, she will be contributing cartographic knowledge as well as public history knowledge for the Digital Historical Maps Project.
Ronald Milne
Co-Investigator and Dean of Educational Resources & Technology
Much of Dean Ronald Milne’s career has been spent working in research libraries with significant holdings of documentary heritage collections. Immediately prior to joining Yale-NUS, Dean Milne was George Lyndon Hicks Fellow with the National Library of Singapore, where he developed a framework for the development of Singapore and Southeast Asia collections. Prior to this, he held leadership roles at the New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage; the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand; Oxford University Library Services (now the Bodleian Libraries) and the British Library. His contributions to the Digital Historical Maps project flow from his extensive knowledge of research libraries and documentary heritage collections.
Paul Tan
Director, ERT-IT Services
Paul Tan currently serves as the Director of ERT-IT Services at Yale-NUS College with extensive experience leading IT teams. He was formerly the Assistant Director of Information Services at Anderson University and has held positions at the College of William and Mary and Singapore Management University. With his skillset and knowledge, he will be assisting with information and communication technology (ICT), and coordinating technical activities relating to platform development, technical interfaces (IIIF) and User Experience (UX) design of the Digital Historic Maps Project.
Robin Blackburn
Curator, Digital Historical Maps
Robin possesses a background in historical research and museum collections management, having worked for 20 years in museums in the UK and Singapore. In the UK, he was a Documentation Officer at the Imperial War Museum, before completing his post-graduate diploma in Museum Studies at Newcastle University. On moving to Singapore, Robin worked at the Changi Chapel and Museum, before going freelance as a museum collections manager. He is currently the Curator for the Digital Historical Maps Project at Yale-NUS College.
Ma Guangyi
UX Designer, Digital Historical Maps
Guangyi has various experience in conceptualising and crafting digital products. Apart from design, Guangyi’s technical background and product management experience contributes as a good surplus to the project. On the UX practice of Digital Historical Maps Project, Guangyi combines user-centered design thinking and experience strategy that deliver best experiences to the users.
Shawn Xuezhi Wang
Software Developer, Digital Historical Maps
Shawn is a full-stack developer with broad technical experience developing cross-platform solutions. Shawn joined the project shortly after completing his post-graduate studies at the National University of Singapore (NUS). As the main software developer for the project, following the technical lead Paul, he utilises his knowledge in Ruby on Rails, Solr, and the International Interoperability Image Framework (IIIF) in concert with his skills in JavaScript, Python to develop the Digital Historical Maps platform.
Co-Investigators
Tan Tai Yong
President, Yale-NUS College
Peter Borschberg
Department of History, National University of Singapore
Collaborating Researchers
Derek Heng
Department of History, Northern Arizona University
Jessica Hanser
Department of History, University of British Columbia
