The Pan-Africanism Data Project

The Pan-Africanism Data Project documents attendees of key events and gatherings of the Pan-Africanist movement from 1900-1959. In addition to making this data available, the project aims to:

• Develop linked open data practices to support the development of interoperable data for Black digital humanities.
• Apply these practices to extant datasets as a proof-of-concept for interoperable Black diaspora data.
• Use the datasets to explore how to visualize the absences in Black diaspora data.

Given the limited resources for Black digital humanities, my project asks how we can develop data practices that allow those of us doing this work to collectively pool our datasets in a format that makes them usable to each other — and beyond Black studies.

Status as of 2024

• I’ve created the initial data sets with Salem State students Jennifer Mahoney and Hibba Nassereddine through archival and secondary source research to identify pan-Africanist events and locate information about attendees.
• I’ve worked with Dartmouth students Ore James, Nyashadzashe Jongwe, Vy Nguyen, and Mikayla Walker to improve the data sets.
• I received a fellowship from the African American Digital Humanities Initiative (AADHum) at the University of Maryland – College Park to partner on this project.