Dear Subscribers,
Evan Centanni here, editor and lead cartographer of Political Geography Now.
As we enter the new year, I realize that many of you may be wondering about the relatively slow publishing schedule we’ve been on, and about whether map updates for your particular areas of interest will be coming soon. Rest assured that we haven’t abandoned you, and a lot more is coming very soon!
As you may have guessed, our plans for the past three months were somewhat derailed with the outbreak of full-scale war in the Israel/Palestine region, with that conflict capturing the world’s attention and demanding detailed – and very carefully fact-checked – coverage.
Some of the other conflicts we’ve covered for the last few years have also slowed down, with fighting in Libya and Ethiopia’s Tigray region at more or less complete standstills amid lasting truces, the Syrian and Yemeni Civil Wars simmering with very few territorial changes, and even the Russia-Ukraine war moving at relatively slow pace.
Regardless, updates to the Ukraine and Israel/Palestine maps will be coming soon, with new editions of other ongoing series – particularly Somalia – also in the pipeline. And we’ll be moving to subscriber-only updates for Israel/Palestine, after our first three maps reports on the new war were made free for all readers as a public service.
In addition to diverting resources to Israel/Palestine coverage, we’ve also been focusing on another big project that will be of interest to many subscribers: A detailed, rigorously fact-checked map of territorial control in the ongoing civil war in Sudan, which will be more precise and accurate than anything else available online, including a careful new analysis of control by third-party rebel groups and of the latest situation in Abyei and other territories disputed between Sudan and South Sudan.
The new Sudan series will debut here very soon, with retrospective early-October and early-December editions published first, and a current update coming not long afterwards. Other new map series are also in development, and we hope to be able to reveal more on those soon.
We’re also continuing to work on technical upgrades to our site, including the long-awaited shift to fully automatic self-serve sign-ups – and cancellations – on our subscriber portal (no more waiting for customer service to get in touch and manually take action).
In the meantime, if you have specific needs or ideas on what you would like us to prioritize, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. You can contact me directly by email at evan@polgeonow.com. We depend on a small number of subscribers like you to fund our conflict tracking coverage, so your feedback carries a lot of weight.
Whether or not you have time to offer your thoughts, please accept my profound thanks for your continued support of our work during this time of rapid shifts in the world conflict environment.
With gratitude and my best regards,
Evan Centanni