Map of Jewish settlement in Olomouc wins international award

Map of Jewish Settlement in Olomouc Wins International Award

The map, titled The Development of Jewish Settlement in Olomouc: The Geographical and Socioeconomic Structure of the Jewish Population from 1180 to 2021 (VUP, 2022), created in collaboration between the Kurt and Ursula Schubert Center for Jewish Studies at the Faculty of Arts and the Department of Geoinformatics at the Faculty of Science of Palacký University, has received the prestigious Best Map Award 2024/2025. It is awarded by the Journal of Maps (Routledge).

The award-winning map was published in the scholarly article “Development of the Jewish Settlement of Olomouc: Geographic and Socioeconomic Structure of the Jewish Population in the Period 1180–2021” (Cahová, Ivana – Barvíř, Radek, 2025, Journal of Maps 21/1.

The Journal of Maps, founded in 2005, is one of the leading international journals focused on cartography and geoinformation analysis. Since 2008, it has annually presented the Best Map Award to the best contribution that excels not only in its scholarly content but also in its cartographic presentation. The jury selects the winner from a shortlist of published works based on a combination of these criteria.
The jury described the winning map as an “outstanding example of historical geoinformation analysis” with “excellent use of colours and a well-thought-out panel structure that clearly guides the reader through the topic.”
A team of co-authors—at the time mainly CJS students—contributed to its creation: Kateřina Lapiszová, Pavlína Niklová, Anna Řezníčková, Nikola Svobodníková, and Václav Chalupný, in collaboration with external contributors Miroslav Papoušek, Daniel Baránek, Jakub Pospíšil, and Alexander Jeništa. The project was led by editors Ivana Cahová and Radek Barvíř.
“Our map was published as early as 2022, but it was not presented to the academic community until the recent article in the Journal of Maps, on the basis of which it received the award. We are very pleased about this. The map provides a comprehensive overview of the development of Jewish settlement in Olomouc from the 12th century to the present. It captures changes in the spatial distribution of the Jewish population in relation to historical and political shifts and supplements this with an analysis of migration patterns within Central Europe. It also includes graphical representations depicting demographic trends, the community’s socioeconomic structure and its position within urban society, as well as the linguistic and cultural diversity of the population,” summarized Ivana Cahová, head of the Kurt and Ursula Schubert Center for Jewish Studies at the Faculty of Arts, Palacký University Olomouc, on behalf of the team of creators.

She also noted that research into the history of the Jewish community in Moravia is one of the long-term priorities of Jewish studies in Olomouc. One of its goals is to make the results of scholarly research accessible to the general public in a comprehensible, visually appealing format. The award-winning map is an example of the successful integration of scientific analysis and modern visualisation methods.
The findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the history of the Jewish community in Olomouc and to its placement within the broader context of Moravian and Czech history. At the same time, they open up space for critical reflection on traditional historical narratives regarding ethnic and cultural minorities.