From UCI NEWS:
“Routes of Enslavement in the Americas,” led by Alex Borucki, associate professor of history at University of California, Irvine, is one of 21 projects receiving a 2023 Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives award from the University of California.
The $840,000 MRPI grant will expand work on the intra-American slave trade database for a period of three years. Launched online in 2018 and created by Borucki and Gregory O’Malley, professor of history at UC Santa Cruz, the database documents more than 27,000 trafficking voyages from one part of the Americas to another from 1550 to 1860. The new funding will enlarge the network of collaborating scholars and students, strengthen the investigation of this horrific traffic at the UC and increase the database’s coverage.
“I’m delighted that the University of California entrusted us with this responsibility, as this funding will support studies on the African Diaspora in the Americas across all UC campuses through faculty and graduate student grants, undergraduate internships, workshops for K-12 teachers and cultural programming engaging the public,” said Borucki.
Joined by Sabrina Smith, assistant professor of Latin American history at UC Merced, the research team will target three areas over three years: interregional movements of African and African-descended captives within colonial Mexico (including California); investigation of the Black Pacific by tracking coastal trafficking routes involving colonial ports in the seaside from California to Chile; and further research on Caribbean migrations (coerced and free) of African-descended people between islands and with the mainland Americas.
