Welcome to the Virtual Shanghai Project!

 

Virtual Shanghai is a research and resource hub dedicated to the history of Shanghai from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. It brings together diverse collections of materials—scholarly essays, archival documents, photographs, maps, quantitative datasets, and more—to tell the city’s story through multiple lenses.

Our approach combines historical scholarship with digital and GIS technologies, enabling both innovative research and rich public access. The platform invites you to explore Shanghai’s past in different ways:

  • Research pathways to follow the city’s history across time and themes

  • Resource collections offering original textual and visual documents

  • Cartographic tools for spatial analysis and real-time mapping (upgraded version coming soon)

We are committed to the principle of open scholarship—sharing research and tools for the benefit of scholars, students, and the public.

Blog

Stay up to date with recent developments and features on the Virtual Shanghai Blog

iVS (Immersive Virtual Shanghai)

iVS is an interactive 3D environment for exploring the images and maps in our database. While it operates outside the main platform, you can view a short introduction on Youtube.

Contact

 

Agence Nationale de la Recherche

"Virtual Shanghai: Shanghai Urban Space in Time" is one of the research projects in social sciences and humanities selected in 2005 by the National Research Agency in France. The ANR attributed a three-year grant to support the project.
"War made Shanghai" was again selected by the National Research Agency in 2012. The three-year project started in March 2013. The project is implemented through the Virtual Shanghai platform.

Last update on Friday 15 August 2025 (17:00) by  C. Henriot

 
© 2003-2021 IrAsia - Projet Director: Pr. Christian Henriot
Site created by Gérald Foliot with webActors - Hosted by TGIR Huma-num
The site is part of the Virtual Cities Project: Beijing - Hankou - Saigon - Shanghai - Suzhou - Tianjin - Wenzhou - Zhejiang
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