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This workshop investigates analogue and digital methods for the analysis of namelessness in historical sources. It is part of the project “The Nameless in History”, funded by the Volkswagenstiftung’s 'Open Up –New Research Spaces for the Humanities and Cultural Studies'. This funding initiative supports researchers in the humanities and cultural studies to 'open up' new areas of research and knowledge by jointly exploring complex and previously unexplored topics. For more information, click the link below.

What did Black freedom mean for the development of citizenship and democracy in the early United States? In this lecture, Damian Pargas (Leiden University) traces how the free Black population expanded continually in the decades between the American Revolution and the Civil War, as northern states abolished slavery while southern states redoubled their commitment to it. He examines how the resulting disputes over the citizenship rights and legal personhood of free and formerly enslaved African Americans, over movement across state lines, access to justice, and participation in democracy, became a driving force behind the sectional conflicts that ultimately led the United States down the path to civil war.

Join the Wilberforce Institute and the BCDSS as Professor William Pettigrew, Dr Nicholas Radburn, and Dr Lila Chambers discuss the Register of British Slave Traders project, its findings on the merchants who financed and organised Britain's slave trade and what insights this allows on the lives of the enslaved people. The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and the Development of Europe (TASTADE) is a major global scientific collaboration, funded by the European Research Council (ERC), and led by Professor William Pettigrew. Theproject also features in the BBC 2 documentary series Finding Britain's Slave Traders.