Marlies Vermeulen has a background in architecture, is co-founder of the artistic spatial research practice Dear Hunter (www.dearhunter.eu) and started the institute of Cartopology (www.cartopology.institute) as part of her artistic PhD project. The Institute of Cartopology addresses two main concerns of cartopologists. Firstly, the place of place in daily life and on maps and secondly the consequences of using maps as research instruments. The interplay between both concerns and the tension field that each entails draws the field of cartopology. It is a search for knowledge that is not immediately written down or told, but is rather hidden in obviousness, in habits and embodied in actions that define places. Cartopological maps challenge existing spatial notation systems (such as the architectural plan) and develops them into research instruments to search for daily life experiences of places.

Cartopology joins the lived reality with the physical place and is at the crossroad between disciplines born from a spatial perspective and those born from a fascination with human behavior and interaction.

Building the institute is a process whereby certain forms of the cartopological map and behavior of the cartopologist are identifies and recognised as valuable artistic research. Cartopology as a field as well as the development of the Institute are are part of her PhD research supervised by Ruth Benschop (Zuyd University), Carolin Stapenhorst (RWTH Aachen) and Peter Peters (Maastricht University). She is also teaching Cartopology at several universities and institutes in Europe.