[Draft Bio]

S. Max Edelson, Professor of History and Associate Chair, researches the history of early modern colonization and the history of cartography. He co-directs two digital projects-- MapScholar and VisualEyes--both platforms for geospatial visualization in the humanities. He also co-directs the UVA Early American Seminar at Monticello, a research community for faculty and graduate students in Charlottesville. His first book, Plantation Enterprise in Colonial South Carolina (Harvard 2006), describes how planters and slaves adapted to the volatile environments of the Carolina Lowcountry. His latest book, The New Map of Empire: How Britain Imagined America before Independence (Harvard 2017) examines British attempts to reform American empire through surveying and cartography in the generation before the American Revolution.