Creating a Visual Language of Marks

THE PROJECT

The trans-Atlantic slave trade was a centuries-long trauma that saw approximately 12.5 million Africans forcibly taken from their homes and transported to work in the emerging plantation societies of the Americas. The trauma of enslavement and sustained repression of language, culture and beliefs blurred memories of origins and birthplaces. Previous attempts at analyzing large datasets of names recorded in manumission records to unearth individuals and personal histories have been challenged by practices of slave renaming.

Drs. Ladly and Keefer are working with their collaborators to develop a searchable visual database using the entries from the 19th century Registers of Liberated Africans to reveal individual identities and origins. Their research includes appropriate methods for collection, analysis and presentation of the sensitive personal information within these datasets. Kartikay Chadha (Project Manager & Researcher) assists the team with designing, developing and training an AI model to work in conjunction with ethno-linguistic and visual models, so that researchers and members of the public may extract meaningful information from the data. Working in the Visual Analytics Lab, the OCAD U design team is constructing computational architectures for the visual/linguistic database, developing a mathematical model for data analysis, and designing dynamic 2D and 3D visual models and user interfaces.

RESEARCH TEAM
Profile picture for Maria Yala

Maria Yala
Research Assistant

Profile picture for Youssouf Traore

Youssouf Traore
Research Assistant

Profile picture for Kartikay Chadha

Eric Lehman
Research Assistant

Profile picture for Michael McGill

Michael McGill
Research Assistant

Profile picture for Thamires de Andrade

Thamires de Andrade
Research Assistant

OUR COLLABORATORS
  • Dr. Paul Lovejoy, York University
  • Dr. Dean Rehberger, Michigan State University
  • Dr. Mohammed Salau, University of Mississippi
  • Dr. Abubakar Babajo Sani, Umaru Musa Yar'adua University, Katsina

OUR PARTNER UNIVERSITIES
OCAD logo
Trent logo
York logo
MSU logo
University of Mississippi logo
Umaru Musa Yaradua University logo
OUR FUNDING ORGANIZATIONS
Cinque Terre
Cinque Terre
Cinque Terre
CONTACT US

Dr. Martha Ladly
E: mladly@ocadu.ca

Dr. Katrina Keefer
E: katrinakeefer@trentu.ca

Kartikay Chadha
E: kchadha@faculty.ocadu.ca


Address:

Visual Analytics Labratory
OCAD University
Rm 720,205 Richmond Street West
Toronto, Ontario M5V 1V3

IMAGE CREDITS

Background & Menu Images

About Section: “Enslaved Ethnic Groups, East Africa, Upper Nile Region, 1840s”, Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora, accessed October 9, 2019, Slavery Images

News Section: “Africa, late 18th cent.”, Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora, accessed October 9, 2019, Slavery Images

Splash Page, Research, and Portal Section: Photography by Kartikay Chadha, Project Manager & Researcher, Visual Analytics Lab, OCAD University. Photos taken during SSHRC supported resaerch in the Sierra Leone Public Archives, Freetown, Sierra Leone - Feburary 2019.

Model Section: “Nègres cangueiros. Différentes nations nègres” (Black porters and black people of different nations). Lithograph, coloured, after Jean Baptiste Debret (1768–1848). From: J.B.Debret, Voyage pittoresque et historique au Brésil, Paris (Firmin Didot Frères) 1834–39, Table 36.

Homepage Credits: By Rod Waddington from Kergunyah, Australia - Surmi Warrior 2, Tulgit, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikipedia Commons

Bunse Island Map: "Bense [Bunce] Island and Fort, Sierra Leone, ca. 1727", Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora, accessed March 19, 2021, Slavery Images