Political Economy Research Seminar
The Aerial History Project: Development across the British Empire seen through 1.7 million aerial photographs
Solomon Hsiang (Stanford)
Tuesday 05 May 2026 14:00 - 15:30
Many of our seminars and public events this year will continue as in person or as hybrid (online and in person) events. Please check our website listings and Twitter feed @STICERD_LSE for updates.
Unless otherwise specified, in-person seminars are open to the public. Please ensure you have informed the event contact as early as possible.
Those unable to join the seminars in-person are welcome to participate via zoom if the event is hybrid.
About this event
The Aerial History Project is an international effort to restore, digitize, stitch, and study a massive collection of aerial photography collected by the United Kingdom beginning in 1946 across 65 countries in the then British Empire. This mega-archive represents a unique source of high-resolution historical information in an otherwise data-scarce context. We develop novel systems of robot-assisted scanning and large-scale image-stitching used to recently complete a reconstruction of the African and Caribbean record, resulting in a historical digital resource of unprecedented scale. We apply machine learning to transform this image-based record into structured geographic information that we study to gain new insights into urbanization, economic development, and environmental change during the 20th century.
The Political Economy Research Seminar is jointly organised by the Departments of Economics, of Government, and of Management, with financial support from STICERD.
It brings together scholars across multiple departments at the LSE and from nearby universities. The series consists of talks by external and internal faculty presenting theoretical or empirical papers on a wide range of topics associated with political economy.
These seminars are held on Tuesdays in term time at 14.00-15.30, in room MAR 6.33, unless specified otherwise.
Seminar coordinators: Timothy Besley (Economics), Tak-Huen Chau (Government), Stephane Wolton (Government), Noam Yuchtman (Management)
Contact gov.comms@lse.ac.uk to be added to the mailing list or for further information.