#  Peter Bol 

Charles H. Carswell Professor in East Asian Languages and Civilizations, FAS

Founding Director of the Center for Geographic Analysis

 

 

 



   ![Peter-Bol](/sites/g/files/omnuum9996/files/styles/hwp_4_5__480x600/public/2025-07/Peter-Bol.jpg?itok=TFzyCZOo) 

 



 

 laptop\_windows [website](https://scholar.harvard.edu/pkbol) 

 

 



 

Professor Bol led the Harvard University-wide effort to establish support for geospatial analysis in teaching and research. He was named first director of the Center for Geographic Analysis when it was founded in 2005. As a leading advocate and user of GIS for research and teaching, Bol is the director of the [China Historical GIS](http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~chgis/), the [China Biographical Database](https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/cbdb), and is co-instructor of the massive open online course, [ChinaX](https://www.edx.org/chinax-chinas-past-present-future), with Prof. William Kirby. Professor Bol is co-founder of the WorldMap project.