The Harm Mapping Project: Navigating Ethics and Collaboration in Map Design

This article details the ethical challenges we encountered while designing maps for The Harm Mapping Project. Led by Dana Cuomo, Susan Hannan, and three undergraduate student research assistants (Madison Dennehy, Meredith Forman, and Abigail Zea), The Harm Mapping Project examines the geography of gender-based violence occurring at Lafayette College, a small (approx. 2,700 undergraduate students) residential liberal arts college in Easton, Pennsylvania. Data collection entailed a participatory mapping exercise in which individual students were instructed to use stickers to mark locations on a blank campus map where they had experienced gender-based violence. Different color stickers indicated different types of harm (e.g., sexual assault, verbal harassment, unwanted touching, stalking, physical abuse, and feeling vulnerable to experience gender-based violence). In addition to better understanding where on campus the student body has experienced gender-based violence, a secondary objective of the project includes providing recommendations to Lafayette College administrators regarding ways to modify the built environment to help prevent future harm from occurring. To support these objectives, the research team began working with Lily Houtman, a trained cartographer, to incorporate feminist design principles into the mapping of the project’s data for public-facing audiences. Here, we describe our design process and share takeaways for cartographers working on similar projects.