Western Australian Legacies of British Slavery

A collaboration of Australian and British-based historians, curators and digital humanities specialists, will conduct extensive original historical research, re-purpose existing databases, and develop an innovative tool for mapping and visualising biographical data and for network analysis. Their work will produce a new understanding of WA’s history as it heads towards its colonial bicentenary; prompt awareness of the continuing role of both slavery and its humanitarian critiques in shaping settler colonial debates, events, culture and law; and provide a national public platform for further research on this theme both nationally and further afield.

Aims

Position Australia into the global story of slavery by generating new histories of the impacts and legacies of slavery in Western Australia.

Identify and produce biographies of Western Australian colonists and their networks, contributing key new information to the People Australia national biographical database.

Visualise and analyse these colonial and imperial networks through network analysis and mapping, with links to the Legacies of British Slavery (LBS) database.

Produce new sources and methods for writing biographies that include slavery.

Share the project findings in a series of publications and a major online exhibition.