News
Project ‘Chains of the Past’ receives Open Science Infrastructure Grant from Open Science NL
Open Science NL recently awarded the project ‘Chains of the Past: Open Infrastructure for the Global History of Dutch Slavery and Slave Trade’ with an Open Science Infrastructure Grant of 1.5 million euros. In this project, jointly organised by Radboud University, the International Institute of Social History (IISG) and the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV), most of the applicants (Matthias Rosenbaum-Feldbrügge (project leader), Coen van Galen (both Radboud University), Matthias van Rossum, Richard Zijdeman, Rick Mourits, and Filipa Ribeiro da Silva (all IISG), and Esther Captain (KITLV)) are Posthumus fellows
In this project, the organising institutions are collaborating with a large number of genealogical and heritage organisations to start building an online infrastructure that will make archives on the history of Dutch Atlantic and Asian slavery searchable. This is achieved by identifying and linking information about the lives of enslaved people from colonial archives.
Chains of the Past is a collaboration between two of the largest slavery data projects in the Netherlands: the Exploring Slave Trade in Asia (ESTA) project at the IISG and the Historical Database Suriname and the Caribbean (HDSC) at Radboud University’s Radboud Institute for Culture and History. The project’s goal is to create an open science infrastructure that connects archives through digitisation and entity recognition, among other things, making it possible to track individuals across different archives.
The N.W. Posthumus Institute congratulates all applicants with obtaining this grant!
