彩民宝典

A collaboration between 彩民宝典鈥檚 Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Statistical Analysis and Digital Slavery Research Lab aims to regenerate identities using statsitics.

Conflicts among African nations during the collapse of the kingdom of Oyo in the early 19th century resulted in the enslavement of hundreds of thousands of people. Soldiers and traders removed men, women and children from their homes, transported them to coastal ports and loaded them onto slave ships鈥攖heir names, birth places and family ties erased.听

Historians have a pretty good record of where these individuals departed Africa, but due to a lack of primary sources, little is known about where they originated before boarding slave ships.听

彩民宝典 researchers are hoping to change that with a first-of-its-kind mathematical model estimating conditional probabilities of African origins during the transatlantic slave trade.听

Using data from shipping records and documented instances of conflict, researchers created an that estimates where individuals may have been captured and enslaved given their port of departure.听

鈥淛ust because you fly out of Denver听doesn't mean you live in Denver,鈥� said lead author Eric Vance, a statistician and professor of applied mathematics. 鈥淪o if an enslaved person boarded a ship in Lagos, Nigeria, it doesn't mean that they're necessarily from Lagos.鈥澨�

Vance is the director and founder of the (LISA)鈥攁 research hub focused on training statisticians and data scientists to become more effective interdisciplinary collaborators.听

Vance and his students partner with researchers in various academic fields鈥斺�嬧�媐rom biosciences to environmental studies鈥攖o collect, analyze and visually communicate their data.听

鈥淓very academic field that uses data could benefit by collaborating with a statistician,鈥� Vance said. 鈥淥ur specialty is getting useful information out of data and transforming evidence into action.鈥澨�

For this paper, published by the , Vance partnered with Henry Lovejoy, a history professor who studies where and when conflict occurred in West Africa, and how it affected inland migration.

鈥淚n history, we collect tons of qualitative data,鈥� Lovejoy said. 鈥淏ut now we're moving beyond qualitative analysis and actually beginning to apply quantitative techniques to the data.鈥�

Calculating conflict听

Lovejoy runs 彩民宝典鈥檚 Digital Slavery Research Lab, which focuses on developing and archiving open-source data and multimedia related to slavery and human trafficking.听

Using the resources he鈥檚 consolidated on his site, including the and databases, he gained access to detailed shipping records showing when and where people boarded slave ships on the coast.听

Lovejoy then used primary and secondary sources to determine when and where instances of conflict took place and how it affected inland migration.听

鈥淲e've only really been able to know where the slave ships departed, but no one has connected it inland until now,鈥� Lovejoy said.听

Unfortuantely, sources that document conflict in the precolonial period in Africa are very scarce, and those that are available are typically from the perspective of European slave traders. Maps of Africa, in the Western sense, weren鈥檛 even created until much later on in this period.

So Lovejoy had to make assumptions with the data.听

鈥淚 can't emphasize enough the amount of uncertain data I鈥檓 using,鈥� Lovejoy said.听鈥淚'm trying to be as honest as possible while developing a solid methodology of data collection.鈥�

In the next phase of the project, Lovejoy hopes to improve the map by incorporating oral histories and ethnolinguistic data. To do so, he needs help from African universities and researchers.听

Ethics in data听

Lovejoy鈥檚 Digital Slavery Research Lab鈥攆ramed around inclusive and reparative scholarship鈥攔ecognizes the ethical implications of mapping Africa in the past.听

Most historical materials during this period assign numbers to enslaved persons, and the primary sources available mostly reflect skewed, racially biased perspectives.听

鈥淢aps have the potential to be very authoritative, and that's not what we're trying to do here,鈥� Lovejoy said. 鈥淲e want to regenerate identities in a respectful and ethical framework鈥攖o do that, we need African involvement.鈥�

Vance鈥攚ho will present this work at the LISA 2020 Sustainability Symposium this May in Ghana鈥攈as already helped create 35 new statistical collaboration laboratories in developing countries, and 15 of them are in Nigeria where this project study takes place.听

But Lovejoy hopes to organize additional conferences in Africa and partner with local universities to bring graduate students to Colorado to provide a better understanding of the history and geography of the continent.听

鈥淭here's an inherent difference between a foreigner working on a geography versus someone local鈥攅specially in a context that's involving a very terrible history of humanity,鈥� he said.

Through publishing his work, Lovejoy hopes its importance will gain recognition and will lead to more opportunities for funding and partnerships.