Agenda
Launch new ESTA data & TIDES / documentary screening Slave Island
The International Institute of Social History invites you to join the Exploring Slave Trade in Asia (ESTA) Database’s second data launch on 12 December 2025. Main organisers are Posthumus PhDs Britt van Duijvenvoorde and Pascal Konings.
Since the launch of the ESTA Database in December 2023, the Database has significantly expanded in scope. Efforts by the ESTA team, collaborating projects at the IISH, and international partners have made possible a new data publication. With these new contributions, the ESTA Database currently contains 5,292 voyages and 9,155 subvoyages. These data lay bare previously unrecorded slave trading patterns from newly added regions such as China, Southeast India, and Mozambique with an increased chronological coverage into the twentieth century. During the event, the ESTA team will also debut its data entry system, TIDES. This entry system allows users to contribute data on slave trade voyages while retaining full data ownership, and to annotate existing ESTA voyages.
The launch of the new data and entry system will be accompanied by several data and project presentations from researchers that are related to ESTA or the field of Indian Ocean slavery, among whom Posthumus PhDs Britt van Duijvenvoorde and Philipp Huber.
After these presentations, there will be a screening of the documentary Slave Island, which follows the activist Jeremy Kewuan in his quest to eradicate human trafficking from Sumba, the Indonesian island he calls home. The documentary forms a testimony of the individuals who still suffer under conditions of modern slavery whilst tracing their current-day experiences back to its colonial roots. Filmmaker Jimmy Hendrickx will join the event to introduce the documentary and answer questions from the audience.
Participation on-site is free of charge, but because of limited seating, prior registration is required via e-mail. You can also join this event online via Zoom by sending a request via e-mail.
