This website is no longer updated and has been replaced with a static copy. The Spatial History Project was active at Stanford University from 2007-2022, engaging in dozens of collaborative projects led by faculty, staff, graduate students, post-docs, visiting scholars and others at Stanford and beyond. More than 150 undergraduate students from more than a dozen disciplines contributed to these projects. In addition to a robust intellectual exchange built through these partnerships, research outputs included major monographs, edited volumes, journal articles, museum exhibitions, digital articles, robust websites, and dozens of lightweight interactive visualizations, mostly developed with Adobe Flash (now defunct). While most of those publications live on in other forms, the content exclusive to this website is preserved in good faith through this static version of the site. Flash-based content is partially available in emulated form using the Ruffle emulator.
Historical Thinking and Empathy in Human Rights Education
Both past and present history teaching has aimed not only to teach students about the past but also to encourage critical thinking and foster good morals. Especially after the Second World War, international and national guidelines emphasized the importance of history teaching to promote peace, critical thinking and human rights. In our modern information era, filled with conflicts and violations of human rights, history teaching has been put forward as a way to teach students appropriate skills of critical thinking and as a way to safeguard democratic values.
In this study of human rights education in Sweden and the US, funded by the Wallenberg foundation, digital tools are used to process and elucidate how history can be used, understood and written in different countries and school cultures. This project aims to map and clarify how history is construed through practices designed to promote historical thinking and empathy. Theories and intentions are problematized in relation to what is possible in the complex reality of history education.
In this study of human rights education in Sweden and the US, funded by the Wallenberg foundation, digital tools are used to process and elucidate how history can be used, understood and written in different countries and school cultures. This project aims to map and clarify how history is construed through practices designed to promote historical thinking and empathy. Theories and intentions are problematized in relation to what is possible in the complex reality of history education.
Lead Researcher
