John Mulligan, a humanities computing researcher and facilitator in Rice University’s Center for Research Computing (CRC), was awarded first place in the data visualization category at the Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing (PEARC) conference for work with Rice’s SlaveVoyages.
The SlaveVoyages database, the first-of-its-kind interactive digital archive of history’s largest slave trades that has attracted media attention around the world, paints a detailed picture of where these people were taken, the numerous rebellions that occurred, the horrific loss of life during the voyages, the identities and nationalities of the perpetrators and much more in a searchable, accessible format making it easy for researchers, students and interested people to easily find and gain information. The archive breaks things down by the smallest details, including geographic location, language of the enslaved persons and more.
Mulligan, who is the technical lead for SlaveVoyages, described the work as “a real marriage of research computing, data visualization and humanities data” bringing to life the stories of the millions of African people who were sent across the Atlantic in slave ships and trafficked within the Americas.
The interactive data visualization for the new “African Origins” dataset focuses on the records of more than 90,000 named individuals who were trafficked from the African coast, but whose ships were intercepted in the Atlantic during the suppression of the slave trade. Because these individuals’ names were recorded, the SlaveVoyages researchers David Eltis and Philip Misevich were, with the help of the public, able to correlate many of these names with known ethnic groups.
By mapping this complex data in a new interface, Mulligan enabled users to conduct searches that generate visual illustrations of where enslaved people likely came from, where they were transported to and from and where they ultimately ended up. The interactive map is available online: https://www.slavevoyages.org/past/database/african-origins#maps.
“This allows everyone who uses the database — from researchers to individuals tracing their family history — to search for the smallest detail or largest trend,” Mulligan said. “Humanities data poses problems in its complexity and size that can prompt new ways of using and thinking about technology as we seek to properly bring to life the big picture without neglecting the smallest nuances and human stories behind the data that we work with.”
Mulligan said the award would not have been possible without the contributions of his colleague, Derek Keller, the support of Rice’s Office of Information Technology and CRC interns.
“Research computing is part of a broad ecosystem that also includes software, networks, people and data,” said Melissa Cragin, associate vice president of information technology. “Public investments in these resources support the production of new knowledge aimed at improving the security, prosperity and well-being of the country.”
Cragin said that in order to maximize the benefits of research, there is an increasing effort to connect the public with this information.
“The CRC is committed to this service mission, supporting projects that help build connections with the public,” she said.
The award, shared with a team from the National Center for Atmospheric Research for their project modeling wildfire spread, is the second research computing award that Rice has won for SlaveVoyages. Mulligan received the inaugural Oracle Eureka award late last year.
"The award is a welcome and powerful indicator of Rice's ability of taking important projects, like SlaveVoyages, to new heights," said Daniel Domingues, associate professor of history and host of SlaveVoyages. "Creating compelling visualizations, documenting the experiences of thousands of people forced into the Atlantic is both a major challenge and a moral imperative."
More information on the Center for Research Computing is available online at https://researchcomputing.rice.edu.