SURF Mentoring
Potential projects/topics: Explore the origins and forced relocation of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic World and beyond by expanding the renowned website SlaveVoyages.org. SlaveVoyages.org was originally created in 2008 to host a database of the well-known trans-Atlantic slave trade. In 2019, it was updated and expanded to include voyages between ports within the Americas. The project is now looking to expand to the Indian Ocean and parts of maritime Asia. The National Endowment for the Humanities has been the principal sponsor of this work carried out originally at Emory Center for Digital Scholarship, the University of California at Irvine, and the University of California at Santa Cruz. The Hutchins Center of Harvard University has also provided support. The website is currently hosted at Rice University.
Potential skills gained: Critical thinking; Deductive reasoning; Quantitative analysis; Synthesizing; GIS; Zotero; Communication; Networking; Project management; Team work; Academic writing; Poster creation; Oral presentations
Required qualifications: Google Drive; Microsoft Office; Knowledge of foreign languages (Dutch, French, Portuguese, or Spanish) preferred though not required
Direct mentor: Faculty/P.I.
Research Areas
Dr. Daniel B. Domingues da Silva is assistant professor of African History at Rice University and co-manager of Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. He graduated with a B.A. in History from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2004 and earned his M.A. and Ph.D. from Emory University, Atlanta, in 2009 and 2011, respectively. Dr. Domingues’s research focuses on the history of the slave trade from West Central Africa, developed with funding from several institutions, including the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Luso-American Foundation. His publications are available in books and peer-reviewed journals in English and Portuguese, such as the Journal of African History, Slavery & Abolition, and Revista Afro-Ásia. Dr. Domingues regularly teaches survey courses on the history of early and modern Africa as well as upper level courses such as “African History through the Digital Medium,” “Modern Africa in Film and Literature,” and “Fighting the Atlantic Slave Trade,” winner of the 2017 Center for Research Libraries Teaching with Primary Sources Award. Dr. Domingues enjoys working with dedicated undergraduate and graduate students, who set their own research agenda and are eager to succeed in their intellectual, artistic, or professional endeavors.
