The Halsey Institute commissioned Dr. Rick Bunch, a geographic information science (GIS) and spatial cognition specialist, to design an interactive map of the South, representing everything from place names to data collected on chicken sales and churchgoers, among other topics. Available on interactive technology inside the exhibition space and on the project website (southboundproject.org), this Index of Southerness allows viewers to move between data sets to arrive at their own understanding of the cultural geography of the South.

Rick Bunch is a Professor in the Department of Geography, Environment, & Sustainability at UNC Greensboro. He has more than twenty years of experience in GIS and the conceptualization, modeling, and analysis of geographically referenced data. Bunch has conducted research that examines patterns in human behavior through cognitive maps, geographic space, and the processes associated with how people learn and synthesize geographic information. He has been the project leader on more than fifty projects over the past decade, and has published twenty-five academic articles, reports, and manuals. He currently serves on the editorial board for the journals Cartography and Geographic Information Science and the International Journal of Applied Geospatial Research.