ITSS PI Gunvor Simonsen to Launch New Project 'Mapping Freedom'
'Mapping Freedom' will use the registers of travelers arriving and departing from St. Thomas. As can be seen from this ledger covering 1841, travelers arriving in St. Thomas March that year came from Saba, St. Croix, Puerto Rico, Spanish Town, S. Domingo, St. Lucia, Margarita, Dominica, and St. Kitts, among others (courtesy of the Danish National Archives open access digitized Caribbean collection).
In the coming two years, PI of IN THE SAME SEA Gunvor Simonsen will collaborate with wonderful people from the Caribbean Genealogy Library, St. Thomas, and the Danish National Archives to establish the research tool Mapping Freedom: From Slavery to Freedom in US Virgin Islands. This is made possible by a generous grant from the Carlsberg Foundation. The project's investment in digital research infrastructure and capacity building will be foundational for future historical research on processes of abolition in the former Danish West Indies and the Caribbean region as a whole. Read more here.