Interdisciplinary research

The grant for the Antislavery Usable Past project is one of three awards announced by the AHRC under their ‘Care for the Future: Thinking Forward through the Past’ theme, which aims to generate new understandings of the relationship between the past and the future. The five year project brings together a team of four professors from the University of Nottingham, the University of Hull and Queens University Belfast, and has three PhD students and two postdoctoral fellows, as well as a number of international partner organisations including Walk Free, the International Slavery Museum and Yale University. It will unearth the details of past antislavery strategies and translate their important lessons into tools for policy makers and civil society.

It examines how slavery is defined by different 'user groups', with the intention of bringing usability and clarity to the different needed types of definitions - specifically legal, operational, and popular definitions. This study also will bring the perspective of the antislavery usable past by asking how formerly enslaved people who became antislavery leaders during past abolitionist movements (18th, 19th and 20th century) understood and used definitions (and measurements) of slavery. Does the definitional debate, especially with regard to contributions by survivors of slavery, have a usable past? The second key activity of this project addresses the measurement of modern slavery. It is a further test of the application of Multiple Systems Estimation techniques to the hidden population of slavery and trafficking victims.

Journey to Justice: Nottingham is a partnership between C3R, the national not-for-profit organisation Journey to Justice, The Galleries of Justice (re-opening as The National Justice Museum in 2017), and the Midlands3Cities Doctoral Training Partnership, collaborating with Nottingham city, arts and heritage organisations. It is focused on public engagement around civil rights, social justice, and human rights and includes an exhibition open to the public from February to June 2017 . It builds on Journey to Justice’s ethos “to inspire people through learning from past and present human rights struggles to take action for social justice.”

From January to November 2016, the project focuses on the Loisaida (Lower East Side) venue with an exhibition on Loisaida community activism from the 1960s to 2001. It will run from October to November at the primary community cultural centre called Loisaida Center and feature many events such as theatre performances, scholarly and activist panels, gallery tours, and mural paintings. After its conclusion, the same organisers will start work on an exhibition in Nottingham called Journey to Justice, which is currently travelling through the UK to bring stories and lessons of past and present human rights and social justice movements to local communities in UK cities. New Nottingham is funded by a generous Cascade Grant from The Nottingham Campaign and a arts grant from the New York City Council.

The project includes a major conference in Nottingham, and workshops on visual culture, public history and education in London, Liverpool and Hull that develop best practice for working with diverse communities, creative practitioners, museums, archives and galleries, and schools and young people.