Dr. Hopper Research Assistant Application Form
Dr. Matt Hopper in the Department of History is seeking students to assist in a research project this Spring 24 quarter. Students from ANY MAJOR can apply. Students who are selected can register for 1 unit of HNRS 400 for Spring 2024. Preferred qualifications: Willingness to learn, have fun, and work as a group!
Project Description:
This project will add 300+ new voyages to the expanding Transatlantic Slave Trade Database (SlaveVoyages.org). As part of a three-year National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant, a new project by a team of researchers including Dr. Hopper (History Department) and led by Dr. Daniel Domingues (Rice University) aims to expand the existing Slave Voyages database to include the Indian Ocean. The project team estimates that 5,000-6,000 new voyages from the Indian Ocean will be added to the existing database of 36,000+ voyages now publicly accessible on SlaveVoyages.org. Students working on this project will learn to use the Slave Voyages online entry form to add new voyages to the database including numerous data fields relating to the specific voyages. Students will extract data points from sources provided by Dr. Hopper from his ongoing research into slave ships captured by the Royal Navy in the Indian Ocean in the nineteenth century. In some cases, students may need to refer to digital images of handwritten nineteenth-century archival documents, although most data are in Excel. Students will train with Dr. Hopper and then work independently with regular meetings to check in on their progress and answer questions. Students will have their efforts acknowledged as contributions on the Slave Voyages website
Applications are due by June 3rd, 2024 by 5pm