The fertile territory of the Republic of Ukraine, between forest and steppe, has been part of many empires, from the Mongol Empire in the thirteenth century to the Russian Empire in the twentieth century. This borderland, as it is often defined, will be the subject op three papers by specialists of Ukrainian mapping.
Volodymyr Dmyterko is an Ukrainian physicist, publisher and bookseller based in Lviv and Cracow. He is specialised in Ukraine's cartographic history, especially of Guillaume Vasseur de Beauplan, the Norman engineer who drew the first modern maps of Ukraine in the first half of the seventeenth century.
Harrie Teunissen together with John Steegh from Dordrecht donated their entire collection of maps, city plans and atlases, circa 17 000 map sheets and 2 300 atlases and travel guides, to Leiden University Libraries. It formed the basis of the online exhibition Borderlands - Ukraine in historical maps. Harrie was a scientific assistant at the University of Amsterdam and a cultural and religious historian of Judaism and Islam.
Finally, Rick Smit is an expert of Justus Perthes’ atlases, maps and publications, 1817-1952 and has worked on thematic maps of geopolitics and ethnography in Europe (1848-1933).
Wouter Bracke