Musa Kazim Azimli, a fifth-year doctoral candidate in history at the University of Virginia, tells the stories of spaces that no longer exist.
Specializing in slavery in the Middle East, his research explores the social history of Istanbul. His dissertation investigates the Imperial Slave Market in the former Ottoman capital, a major institution that operated from the 17th to the mid-19th century and was likely the largest of its kind in the region.
He spoke with UVA Today about spatial storytelling, what tools he uses and its benefits in humanities research.
Doctoral student Musa Kazim Azimli studies early modern and modern Middle East history at UVA after moving to Charlottesville from his hometown of Istanbul. (Contributed photo)
Q. What is spatial storytelling?
A. Spatial thinking is understanding that where it happened is critical to understanding why it happened. Spatial storytelling builds on this idea by using space as a central narrative framework, constructing stories through locations, movement and spatial relationships.
A broad intellectual shift happened across the social sciences and humanities in the 1980s and 1990s to take space and geography seriously as fundamental categories of analysis, rather than time and history, which had previously dominated. In this thinking, where things happen began to be seen not just as a background detail, but as an active part of how and why they happened.
Spaces are alive with stories and memories. This is actually an ancient survival strategy, crucial for wayfinding or mental mapping. As we see in the works of evolutionary psychologist Michelle Scalise Sugiyama, myths and legends are not just stories; they are sophisticated methods for transmitting environmental and spatial knowledge in ancestral societies. They function as narrative mental maps, a form of mnemonic topography that encodes the landscape into memory through storytelling. We can trace this spatial logic throughout history: from the classical method of loci, where memory is organized through familiar spaces, to Australian Aboriginal songlines, where the landscape itself becomes a living archive of knowledge.
Q. What tools are used for this kind of research?
A. Maps are one of the important sources for this type of methodology. Geographic information systems, or GIS, is a computer system for capturing, storing, checking, analyzing and visualizing data that is tied to a location on Earth.
