Project overview

Funding and awards

The project was initiated in 2017 under a 3-year Preservation and Access grant from the US National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) (PW‑253719‑17).

In January, 2023 the project was awarded a 3-year Digital Humanities Advancement Grant from the NEH.

Since 2017 it has also supported by ongoing in-kind contributions from the University of Pittsburgh World History Center.

Development of Version 2 in 2021 and further improvements in 2022 were generously supported by the KNAW Humanities Cluster in the Netherlands.

The Asian Studies Center at Pitt has supported development of the Teaching with WHG section of the site and the Place Collection feature introduced in v2.1

The Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at Pitt has supported development of the Dataset Collection feature and exemplar data in that broad region.

World Historical Gazetteer received the 2021 "Best DH Tool or Suite of Tools Award" from Digital Humanities Awards

Current Project Team

Ruth Mostern, Principal Investigator and Project Director

Alexandra Straub, Project Manager & Editorial Manager

Stephen Gadd, Technical Director & Lead Developer

Jesse Obert, WHC Postdoctoral Fellow

Karl Grossner, Founding Technical Director

Catherine Fratto, Teacher Workshop Coordinator & Educational Content Development

Student Research Assistant Team, 2024-2025

Audrey Wolyniec, Justin Piel, Louise Matthews (REEES), Stanley Teng (Pitt Library)

Former Team Members

Nathan Michalewicz, WHC Postdoctoral Fellow

Susan Grunewald, Associate, former Postdoctoral Fellow

Ryan Horne, Associate, former Postdoctoral Fellow

Patrick Manning, Project Consultant

David Ruvolo, Project Manager

Matias Badino, Student Research Assistant

Yiting Chen, Student Research Assistant

Alec Story, Student Research Assistant

Owen Knight, Student Research Assistant

James Sauls, Graduate Student Research Assistant

NEH Advisory Board 2017-2020

Clifford Anderson, Vanderbilt University

Robert Batchelor, Georgia Southern University

Merrick Lex Berman, Independent Scholar

Christopher Chase-Dunn, University of California, Riverside

Tom Elliot, Institute for Study of the Ancient World, NYU

Ethan Gruber, American Numismatic Society

Leif Isacksen, University of Exeter

Katherine Hart, University of Pittsburgh, World History Center

Jane Landers, Vanderbilt University

Leo Lucassen, International Institute of Social History (IISG), NL

Bruno Martins, University of Lisbon

Adam Rabinowitz, University of Texas, Austin

Patricia Seed, University of California, Irvine

Ryan Shaw, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill

Rainer Simon, Austrian Institute of Technology

Rombert Stapel, International Institute of Social History (IISG), NL

Richard Zijdeman, International Institute of Social History (IISG), NL

The World Historical Gazetteer index contains information from Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN)® which is made available under the ODC Attribution License.

Icons used on this site include ones made by Becris, bqlqn, Freepik, Good Ware, Gregor Cresnar, iconixar monkik, phatplus, Icon home, Pixel perfect, and Smashicons from www.flaticon.com