Welcoming a New Member of the Collective... Ate Poorthuis

I'm very happy to announce the newest member of the FloatingSheep collective: Ate Poorthuis. Ate makes a fantastic addition to the collective as we needed someome to blame my mistakes on, his research interests are focused on studying how user-generated data (Flickr photos, tweets) can help us better understand the processes and places of cities. He's has also been central in our ongoing collection of all geo-coded tweets and, finally, he's not afraid to map zombies.

Ate is currently a PhD student at the University of Kentucky’s Department of Geography. A recent transplant from the Netherlands, he has a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree from the University of Amsterdam (also in Geography). His interests are at the crossroads of urban geography, public space and the Geoweb – subjects that he also likes to explore via a mix of coding, mapping and data viz.

He gave a really interesting presentation at the 2012 AAG on the production and consumption of tourist places, using Flickr photos and comments of NYC's High Line Park as an example. Particularly innovative is his application of space-time permutation scan statistics (which comes out of epidemiology) and can be very useful in identifying clusters in both space and time.

Prior to beginning his Ph.D. at Kentucky last fall, Ate wrote a great Master's thesis using the location of Flickr photos to study the density of urban digital landscapes and the differences between what "locals" and "tourists" document.