Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database

Between 1514 and 1866 an estimated over 10 million people of African descent entered the Americas via the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database was launched last year by the Emory University Digital Library Research Initiative, to help researchers, students and the general public  track and better understand this part of history.
The open access (free) online database offers information on nearly 35,000 voyages across the Atlantic - approximately 82 percent of the entire slave trade. Although not complete, Voyages provides a look at the contours of the trade, over four centuries, across four continents, and through these patterns allows insight into its impact. Researchers can look at particular voyages, examine estimates of the extent of the trade, and search by names. The website includes essays, introductory maps, a selection of images and lesson plans and links to other related resources.
The project is the result of collaborative research drawing on data in archives and libraries around the Atlantic world.
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database is freely available online at http://www.slavevoyages.org/

Laptop use - internet connectivity

In response to requests for increased network access we have begun investigating wireless access. We have also identified and made live a number of open access network points in the library area - these provide Internet connectivity for users requiring a web connection from their own personal laptop computers. These are signposted with a red sticker and you will also see posters around the library area. Cables can be borrowed from the enquiry desk in the Small Hall.


Stand-alone usage is also accessible wherever usable power sources are located in public areas, unless the area has been designated a quiet study area.

Fratricide and Fraternité: Understanding and Repairing Neighbourly Atrocity

Opening Conference: FRATRICIDE
part of the Fratricide and Fraternité:Understanding and Repairing Neighbourly Atrocity Mellon Sawyer Seminar Series.
25 – 26 February 2010

Beveridge Hall, Senate House, University of London


An interdisciplinary conference exploring the causes and consequences of neighbourly atrocities across history, cultures, and continents.

Panels include:
• Fratricide and mythology
• Neighbourly identity
• Fear thy neighbour
• Logics of neighbourly violence
• A discussion with Jan T. Gross (Princeton), author of Neighbours
• Statement 710339 and Q&A with film-maker Refik Hodzik on the legacies of Srebrenica


This series comprises 2 conferences and 6 seminars organized by the Human Rights Consortium, School of Advanced Study, University of London


The events are free and open to all. Advance registration required.
For further information and to register go to www.sas.ac.uk/human_rights.html
or email kirrily.pells@sas.ac.uk

Australian and New Zealand Library and Archives Group (ANZLAG) Workshop

The annual ANZLAG (Australia and New Zealand Library and Archives Group) workshop will be held on Monday 10th May 2010, and hosted by the Institute of Commonwealth Studies Library, in Senate House, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU.


This is both an advance notice and a call for presentations and papers.

We are interested in presentation on the following themes:

* Australian and New Zealand (and Pacific) literature collections in the UK
* UK publishing of works by Australian and New Zealand authors, and researching publishers archives
* Notable library and archive collections in the UK and Europe

We also plan a round table on issues relating to current publishing including legal deposit and parallel importing.

Researchers, librarians and archivists are all encouraged to contact me with suggested topics - and we would encourage anyone interested to get in touch. Please forward this to anyone you think may be interested.

Further details of programme and cost will be sent out once available

Books added to the collection in December 2009

A list of new books added to the collection can be found on our new books page.

New titles this month cover titles as diverse as elections in Australia; constitution making in Guyana; federalism in Malaysia; arsenic mitigation in Bangladesh; a report on South Afrian youth; the enclosure of range lands in Namibia; Zambian trade unions and maternal health in West Africa.

Facebook

We have now published a Page on Facebook - Facebook members can become Fans and keep up to date with the Commonwealth Studies Library, including Blog RSS feeds. Just search for Institute of Commonwealth Studies Library....

Do let us know any feedback, as this is a new service and hopefully a new way of keepiong in touch with people.

Maps workshop postponed

Due to a conflicting event the Maps workshop programmed for Friday January 29th, 2.00pm has been postponed - further information will be posted opnce a new date has been set

Last chance to book for Colonial Blue Books workshop

Commonwealth Studies Library Workshops


Our programme of free workshops offer short practical sessions to help you discover and make use of the wealth of information available at the Commonwealth Studies Library. Book your place by emailing icommlib@sas.ac.uk (please indicate any particular areas of interest so workshops can be tailored to your needs)


Colonial Blue Books and Annual Reports: Discover the wealth of statistical and social data contained in these annual reports, full of rich information on all aspects of colonial administration and life in the colonies.

Thursday January 14th, 2.00pm, NG14, Ground Floor Library, Senate House.

Workshops start at 2.00 and last for approximately an hour. Places are limited so please pre-book in advance.

We can also arrange workshops for specific research groups or groups of students. For advice or assistance, telephone David Clover, Commonwealth Studies Librarian, 020 7862 8840 or email icommlib@sas.ac.uk

Web archive of Singapore

With thanks to the Social Science internet update from Intute

The Web Archive of Singapore is maintained by the National Library of Singapore. It is creating an archive of snapshots of thousands of websites coveringculture, economics and politics. These are being preserved as a resource for the social history of the region. They include government department websites, coverage of specific events (such as SARS, political events, elections) educational and recreational websites. Each entry has an abstract of content and links to snapshots of the site taken on different dates. The database may be searched or browsed. Users should note that not all materials are offered in English.

London Debates 2010 How does Europe in the 21st century address the legacy of colonialism?

LONDON DEBATES
at the School of Advanced Study
13 – 15 May 2010
CALL FOR PAPERS

The School of Advanced Study at the University of London invites applications for the second of a series of international debates for outstanding young researchers in the humanities and social sciences.
London Debates are discussion workshops at which a subject of broad concern in the humanities and social sciences is debated by a small group of invited senior academics and a selection of early-career researchers. The resulting publication will be published online by the School of Advanced Study.

The competition is open to scholars based in the EU/EEA, who are in their final-year of doctoral study or up to 10 years beyond the award of their doctorate. Successful applicants will be awarded bursaries to cover travel and accommodation.

You are invited to send the following in English by email attachment
• Your curriculum vitae (2000 words maximum);
• the name, address and email address of one referee
• a response of 2000-3000 words on the subject below
to Rosemary Lambeth (rosemary.lambeth@sas.ac.uk), by the closing date of Friday 29 January 2010, with a hard copy sent to reach the Dean, School of Advanced Study, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1 7HU, by Friday 5 February 2010.

The 2010 topic is: How does Europe in the 21st Century address the legacy of colonialism?
We inhabit a world that continues to be shaped by the legacy of European colonial expansion and exploitation. Patterns of migration, trade, investment and even aid reflect that legacy, and it casts a long shadow over diplomatic, military and cultural relationships between Europe and the developing world. In domestic as well as foreign affairs, European policy makers are constantly being reminded that they operate within a historical context of which colonialism was an integral part. In what ways does this shape the domestic and foreign policies of contemporary European states? And how do European citizens address this legacy in their daily lives?

The legacy of Imperialism has also lain behind some of the most impassioned recent debates within academia. It has been suggested that whole branches of supposedly ‘objective’ academic study provided ideological legitimacy for and even materially assisted the colonial project. The ‘Orientalist’ debate of the 1970s and ‘80s, which contributed to the rise of postcolonial studies, has been reinvigorated in the last decade by the ‘War on Terror’ and the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. Some scholars have been accused of facilitating the path to conflict by producing work that ‘rehabilitates’ the record of European colonialism, or which perpetuates hostile stereotypes of the non-European ‘other’. Not only in the research they do, but over issues such as freedom of speech and the introduction of more inclusive admissions policies, European Universities grapple daily with the legacy of the colonial past.

Your response may include, but is not limited to, the areas under the two headings below.
Please note that preference will be given to papers that have genuine interdisciplinary appeal, and which have important implications for our broader understanding of the legacy of European colonialism.
1. The domestic and foreign policy of European states. What is the relevance of the legacy of the colonialism in the following areas?
• Race Relations
• Language
• Migration, Refugees, Asylum Issues
• Human Rights
• Legal Systems
• Public Services in Europe
• The ideologies of the European Left and Right
• The Commonwealth, the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie and comparable international organisations
• Trade
• Aid
• Military intervention

2. European culture, leisure and academia. What has been the impact of the legacy of colonialism over the following?
• The novel
• Post-colonialism and Post-Modernism
• Patterns of consumption
• Tourism
• Historical research
• Religion
• Music

Early closing - Wednesday 6th January

Due to weather conditions the Senate House Library including Commonwealth Studies Library will close tonight at 5.00pm (rather than the scheduled 6.00pm)

This is due to staff shortages and concern that staff will be able to safely get home following expected heavy snow this afternoon.

Trevor Reese Memorial Prize - competition open

The Trevor Reese Memorial Prize was established by the Institute of Commonwealth Studies in 1979. It is in the name of Dr Trevor Reese, a distinguished scholar of Australian and Commonwealth history, who was Reader in Imperial Studies at the Institute until his death in 1976. He was the author of several leading works in his field, and was both founder and first editor of the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History . The Prize was established with the proceeds of contributions to a memorial fund by friends and colleagues of Trevor Reese throughout the Commonwealth and United States . The Prize, of £1,000, is awarded every three years to the author of a work which has made a wide-ranging, innovative and scholarly contribution in the broadly-defined field of Imperial and Commonwealth History.

The next award of the Prize will be in 2010, for books in the relevant field published in 2007 - 2009.

Previous winners include:

• Professor Andrew Porter, Religion Versus Empire? British Protestant missionaries and overseas expansion, 1700-1914 (Manchester University Press, 2004)
• Professor Catherine Hall, Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination 1830-1867 (Polity Press, 2002)
• Terence Ranger, Voices from the Rocks (James Currey, Indiana University Press)
• Samita Sen, Women and Labour in Late Colonial India: The Bengal Jute Industry (Cambridge University Press, 1999)
• Alan Atkinson, The Europeans in Australia: A History. Volume One: The Beginning (Oxford University Press, Australia: Oxford, Auckland, New York, 1997)
• Rod Edmond, Representing the South Pacific: Colonial Discourse from Cook to Gauguin (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, 1997)
• Professor David K Fieldhouse, Merchant Capital and Economic Decolonization: The United Africa Company 1929-1989 (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1994)

Authors or publishers wishing to submit titles for consideration should send two copies to Troy Rutt , Events &; Publicity Officer, Institute of Commonwealth Studies , at the address below, by 1 February 2010 .

Institute of Commonwealth Studies
School of Advanced Study, University of London
2nd Floor, South Block, Senate House
Malet Street , London , WC1E 7HU
T: +44 (0) 20 7862 8853 F: +44 (0) 20 7862 8813
E: troy.rutt@sas.ac.uk W: http://commonwealth.sas.ac.uk/

Society for Caribbean Studies Conference Call for Papers

34th Annual Conference of the Society for Caribbean Studies
University of Southampton
Wednesday 7th July - Friday 9th July 2010

The Society for Caribbean Studies invites submissions of one-page abstracts and a short CV by 15th January, 2010 for research papers on the Hispanic, Francophone, Dutch and Anglophone Caribbean, and on Caribbean diasporas for this annual international conference. Papers are welcomed from all disciplines and can address the themes outlined below. We also welcome abstracts for papers or for full panel proposals that fall outside this list of topics. Those selected for the conference will be invited to give a 20-minute presentation and will be offered the opportunity to publish their work as part of the Society's online series of papers.

PROVISIONAL PANELS

Maritime Studies

Archaeology and Material Culture

Ports of Arrival

Pedagogy and Education

The Windrush Generation

Intra-Caribbean Migration

Caribbean Popular Music

Performance

Regional Integration and the Future of Caricom

Oral History

Post-Independence Trinidad

Nature-Society Relations

To submit an abstract online, click here.

The Society will provide a limited number of Postgraduate Bursaries for presenters to assist with registration and accommodation costs. Postgraduate researchers should indicate that they are seeking a bursary when submitting their abstract, but please note that travel costs cannot be funded. Arts researchers or practitioners living and working in the Caribbean are eligible to apply for the Bridget Jones Award, the deadline for which is also 15th January, 2010.

For further queries, or alternative methods of abstract submission, contact Lorna Burns at societyforcaribbeanstudies@gmail.com, or by mail at The Department of English Literature, 5 University Gardens, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, G12 8QQ. For more information on the Bridget Jones Award, contact Kate Quinn at kate.quinn@sas.ac.uk.

New to archives catalogue - Sir Keith Hancock collection

The Institute of Commonwealth Studies began work in 1949. The first Director was Professor Keith Hancock who started work in that year. We were pleased to be able to add descriptions of our collection of Hancock's papers to the ULRLS Archive Catalogue in December last year. The collection has been catalogued to file level and is now available to be searched online.

Sir (William) Keith Hancock was born in Melbourne, Australia on 26 June 1898 and obtained his BA at Melbourne University. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, 1922-1923, and obtained a BA with 1st class honours in Modern History. In 1923 he was the first Australian to be awarded a Fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford, and in 1924 he returned to Australia to be Professor of Modern History at Adelaide University. He was Professor of Modern History at Birmingham University from 1933-1944, and Professor of Economic History at Oxford University, 1944-1949. He was appointed to the War Cabinet Offices as Supervisor of Civil Histories, 1941, and thereafter editor of the series. In 1949 he became the first Director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and Professor of British Commonwealth Affairs, University of London.

In 1954 he headed an inquiry into constitutional problems in Buganda. The Report was published by HMSO in 1954 as Cmd 9320, Uganda Protectorate Buganda [Namirembe Conference]. Hancock returned to Australia in 1957. He was Director of the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University from 1957 to 1961 and was Professor of History at the Institute of Advanced Studies, ANU until his retirement in 1965. On his retirement he was made Emeritus Professor (1968) and created the first University Fellow of ANU. Other positions he has held were Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Australian Dictionary of Biography from 1958 to 1965 and inaugural President of the Australian Academy of the Humanities from 1969 to 1971. He was knighted in 1953 and awarded the KBE in 1965. Sir Keith Hancock died in Canberra in 1988.

The papers of Sir (William) Keith Hancock largely relate to his chairmanship of the Buganda Constitutional Committee, 1954, and include correspondence, in particular with Sir Andrew Cohen, Governor of Uganda, papers from a seminar on constitutional issues in Uganda, background notes, papers of the Buganda Constitutional Committee and Steering Committee, minutes of the Namirembe Conference, papers about the Uganda Development Corporation and the Uganda National Congress, notes of visits to Ankole, Toro, Bunyoro-Kitara and Busoga and press cuttings.

There are also correspondence and press cuttings relating to Hancock's books , "British War Economy" and "Problems of Social Policy" (History of the Second World War UK Civil Series Vol 1 & 2), 1949-1950; press cuttings of the Liberal Summer School, Oxford, July 1955; correspondence and other papers collated for his biography of Jan Smuts; notebooks with details for his autobiography; a black and white photograph, with supporting correspondence, of a bust of Hancock by the artist Alan Jervis and tapes of radio broadcasts made by him for ABC, mainly of an autobiographical theme but including views on arms control, the atomic bomb, Australia's defence treaties and relationship with the USA.