Slavery North is a research institute that was established in 2022. It combines a focus on slavery in Canada and the American North. It is an international first: a university-based research institute focused on:
Exploring Canada’s forgotten 200-year history of Transatlantic Slavery under the British and the French
Exploring the overlooked histories of slavery in the American North
Remembering and interrogating the slaving histories that connected different parts of British North America
Locating, digitizing, and sharing relevant historical evidence
Dr. Charmaine A. Nelson
At the time, she was a Tier I Canada Research Chair in Black Diasporic Art and Community Engagement at NSCAD University in Halifax, Canada. The Institute was the first research centre in Canada to focus on the largely unrecognized 200-year history of Canadian Slavery. It ingeniously combined a focus on traditional research and research-creation (artistic and cultural production by artists and cultural producers).
Between 2020 and 2022, as the Institute for the Study of Canadian Slavery, we have supported graduate student and artist-in-residence fellows, and hosted panel discussions, lectures, and a workshop. We also partnered with the Nova Scotia Archives (Halifax) to create a video tutorial on the study of slavery in Nova Scotia and with the Canadian Commission for UNESCO to organize an academic workshop.
While much archival information about tropical sites of plantation slavery has already been digitized and placed in open access databases, no such digital resource exists for the study of Canadian Slavery…until now. Creating an online, open access database is a critical outcome for Slavery North. Our key goals include:
Locating, documenting, collating, and digitizing archival holdings to redress the historical record
Making the primary source materials for the study of slavery in Canada and the American North widely accessible and discoverable
As a unique, state-of-the-art research and artistic destination, Slavery North facilitates scholarship and cultural production to preserve the historical, rare, and often fragile nature of art, artifacts, and primary archival collections of relevance to these understudied regions.
Slavery North will also work to transform curricula and advance public engagement with and knowledge of these collections and the histories they represent.
Is supported in this work by wonderful Research Assistants, an esteemed Advisory Board, affiliated centres, and dedicated staff at the University of Massachusetts.
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