The study of geographical knowledge; ‘the coalescence during the 1960s of a small number of geographers interested in the social, cultural, and historical foundations of spatial knowledge and behaviour’ (Edney (2005) Cartographica 40, 1–2); ‘the study of the world as people conceive of and imagine it’ (John Kirtland Wright, quoted in Keighren (2005) J. Hist. Geog. 31).