Links
EUROTAST recognises that there is a wealth of information on the internet linked to the network’s core themes. The following are a selection of related research projects and information resources that will enable further exploration. If you have a related project that you would like us to include here, please contact us:
The African Diaspora Archaeology Network (ADAN)
“The ADAN provides a focal point for archaeological and interdisciplinary studies of African diasporas, with news, current research, information and links to other web resources related to the archaeology and history of descendants of African peoples. Through this engagement with African diasporas, the ADAN seeks to connect an intellectual community that considers the historical processes of culture, economics, gender, power, and racialization operating within and upon African descendant communities.”
African Origins
African Origins contains information about the migration histories of Africans forcibly carried on slave ships into the Atlantic. Using the personal details of 91,491 Africans liberated by International Courts of Mixed Commission and British Vice Admiralty Courts, this resource makes possible new geographic, ethnic, and linguistic data on peoples captured in Africa and pulled into the slave trade. Through contributions to this website by Africans, members of the African Diaspora, and others, we hope to set in motion the rediscovery of the backgrounds of the millions of Africans captured and sold into slavery during suppression of transatlantic slave trading in the 19th century.
“La traite et l’esclavage ont été, dès leur origine, des phénomènes globalisés. L’enjeu de ce projet est de rendre compte de cette dimension globale des dynamiques sociales étudiées (désormais qualifiées par les termes de « diaspora », « Black Atlantic », « circulations transnationales »), tout en menant des recherches sur des terrains localisés, qui seront à la fois confrontées entre elles et replacées dans un cadre plus large.
Le travail multidisciplinaire depuis et sur les sociétés coloniales et post-coloniales, du nord et du sud, vise à dépasser deux tendances récurrentes des discours sur l’esclavage : celui de la mise en accusation des sociétés occidentales qui passe par une confusion généralisante entre colonialisme, esclavage et racisme ; celui de la victimisation, qui tend à naturaliser la différenciation culturelle et d’origine en l’instituant comme « race », immuable et définitive”
AWAD: The Atlantic World and the Dutch 1500-2000
“The Atlantic World and the Dutch, aims to preserve and study the mutual cultural heritage resulting from Dutch contact with the peoples of both Africa and the Americas over a period of some five hundred years. The initial stage of the project began in February 2004 and was jointly funded by the NWO (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research) and the HGIS programme (Netherlands Culture Fund) for intensifying international cultural relations of the Dutch ministries of Foreign Affairs and Education, Culture and Science. A main objective is to identify relevant written sources held within collections both in the Netherlands and abroad. A secondary element of the project involves investigating current and future historical research projects, in particular those pertaining to the tangible and intangible legacy of the Dutch overseas presence, as well as initiatives regarding the management and preservation of records.”
CoHaB: Diasporic Constructions of Home and Belonging (Initial Training Network)
“All over the world, stable concepts of home and belonging have, for a variety of reasons, become the exception rather than the rule. This has led to dramatic cultural, social and political changes and challenges. The study of diaspora and migration has therefore evolved into a burgeoning field of research with an urgent practical relevance. In a wide and sometimes confusing array of approaches it is mainly covered by the humanities and the social sciences.
The CoHaB Network unites world-leading institutions in this field in the conviction that interdisciplinary training as well as international and inter-sectoral co-operation are key to any productive study of diasporas. CoHaB gains scope and momentum by its ‘Network of Networks’ rationale, binding together already existing cooperations. It is based on the resolve to strengthen interdisciplinary research in the field with a view to establishing diaspora studies as a transdisciplinary research area in its own right. Training young researchers on the basis of this conviction means to provide them with the opportunity to conduct their work in a variety of disciplinary environments as well as outside a purely academic context.”
EURESCL: Slave Trade, Slavery Abolitions and their Legacies in European Histories and Identities
“EURESCL is a project funded under the Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities of the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Commission. EURESCL intends to locate the slave trade and slavery in the history of the construction of the European identity, interpreted at national or local levels, in historical and contemporary dimension, and by investigating the continuity – or discontinuity – between historical processes in which turning points might have been defined by different dates of the abolition of slavery. Another objective is to study the evolution of the social relationships that arise from the management of the representations of, and social practices inherited from slavery.”
Implicit Bias and Philosophy International Research Project
“Over the last decade, a large psychological literature has developed on implicit biases. There is by now substantial empirical support for the claim that most people— even those who explicitly and sincerely avow egalitarian views—hold what have been described as implicit biases against such groups as blacks, women, gay people, and so on. (This is true even of members of the “target” group.) These biases are manifested in, for example, association tasks asking subjects to pair positive and negative adjectives with black or white faces: most are much speedier to match black faces with negative adjectives than with positive ones. They are also, it has been argued, manifested in behaviour: studies have shown that those with anti-black implicit biases are less friendly to black experimenters and more likely to classify an ambiguous object as a gun when it’s associated with a black person and as harmless when it’s associated with a white person.
Philosophers have, with a few notable exceptions, paid little attention to this literature. But there is much that should interest philosophers, and much philosophical work to be done. Doing this work properly requires collaboration between philosophers of mind and psychology, ethicists, political philosophers, and philosophers working on gender and race. It also requires input from philosophically-minded psychologists. In addition, some of the issues considered have significant consequences for equality policy and are of interest to equality professionals and campaigners. This project is the first to bring together all these groups in a sustained effort to work through these issues.”
RACE: The power of an Illusion
The Online companion to California Newsreel’s 3-part documentary about race in science, society and history. This resource includes substantive teaching resources.
“Race is one topic where we all think we’re experts. Yet ask 10 people to define race or name “the races,” and you’re likely to get 10 different answers. Few issues are characterized by more contradictory assumptions and myths, each voiced with absolute certainty.
In producing this series, we felt it was important to go back to first principles and ask, What is this thing called “race?” – a question so basic it is rarely raised. What we discovered is that most of our common assumptions about race – for instance, that the world’s people can be divided biologically along racial lines – are wrong. Yet the consequences of racism are very real.
How do we make sense of these two seeming contradictions? Our hope is that this series can help us all navigate through our myths and misconceptions, and scrutinize some of the assumptions we take for granted. In that sense, the real subject of the film is not so much race but the viewer, or more precisely, the notions about race we all hold.
We hope this series can help clear away the biological underbrush and leave starkly visible the underlying social, economic, and political conditions that disproportionately channel advantages and opportunities to white people. Perhaps then we can shift the conversation from discussing diversity and respecting cultural difference to building a more just and equitable society.” – Larry Adelman, Series Executive Producer & Co-Director of California Newsreel
The Slave Trade Research Project (University of Bremen)
“Aided by researchers from the university, 8th and 12th grade high-school students in Bremen are about to start a search for historical traces of colonial trade and slavery in their town. They are following the wisdom of Confucius: “What you tell me, I forget. What you show me, I remember. What you let me do, I understand.” In this vein, among other things they will be searching the archives and museums in Bremen to see if they can find out whether and, if so, to what extent the dependency of the sugar and cotton trade on slavery is retained in the civic memory. The project is headed by Sabine Broeck, Professor of American Studies and an authority on the subject of “Black Diaspora” in the Faculty of Linguistics and Literary Studies at the University of Bremen.”
The Transatlantic Slave Trade Database
“The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database comprises nearly 35,000 individual slaving expeditions between 1514 and 1866. Records of the voyages have been found in archives and libraries throughout the Atlantic world. They provide information about vessels, enslaved peoples, slave traders and owners, and trading routes. A variable (Source) cites the records for each voyage in the database. Other variables enable users to search for information about a particular voyage or group of voyages. The website provides full interactive capability to analyze the data and report results in the form of statistical tables, graphs, maps, or on a timeline.
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database is the culmination of several decades of independent and collaborative research by scholars drawing upon data in libraries and archives around the Atlantic world. The Voyages website itself is the product of two years of development by a multi-disciplinary team of historians, librarians, curriculum specialists, cartographers, computer programmers, and web designers, in consultation with scholars of the slave trade from universities in Europe, Africa, South America, and North America. The National Endowment for the Humanities is the principal sponsor of the project, and it is an Emory University Digital Library Research Initiative.”
USI: Understanding Slavery Initiative
“The Understanding Slavery initiative (USI) is a national learning project, which supports the teaching and learning of transatlantic slavery and its legacies using museum and heritage collections. Over the past eight years six museums across the UK have worked in partnership to share expertise, develop resources, training opportunities and school sessions.
One of the main tenets of the USI partnership is that the history of transatlantic slavery does not belong to any one cultural group, or nation. It is a global history whose legacy can be seen and felt in various areas of today’s societies on an international scale. The USI partners have developed resources and approaches with an understanding that by reviewing the history, and understanding its wider global impacts, teachers and learners gain a better understanding of how to read history and ways in which to make sense of the world in which they live today.”