In May 2025, with support from a Pitt University Center for International Studies Hewlett Grant, the Institute for Spatial History Innovation and the Pitt Center for Latin American Studies held a two-day workshop at the National Archives in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on the topic of ethics and justice in digital history titled "Workshop Ética e Justiça nas Humanidades Digitais." The workshop and related activities reflect one pillar of ISHI’s core mission: to advocate for digital justice.
Twenty-three Brazilian experts, working at the intersection of spatial history, digital history, and digital ethics, attended the workshop along with ISHI Director Ruth Mostern and Associate Director Alexandra Straub and (via Zoom) World Historical Gazetteer Technical Director Stephen Gadd. Meeting sessions explored best practices and continuing challenges pertaining to the development of open source and linked data software for modeling, publishing, and exploring memories of historical injustice. Presenters highlighted the importance of including community voices in the creation of projects about memory, contextualizing data that may have historically been obtained through extractive practices, and how to use linked historical data to expand ideas about authority to speak about the human past.
Ruth, Ali, and Stephen introduced various ethical challenges related to the World Historical Gazetteer (WHG), including how to deal with sensitive or offensive place name data. Keila Grinberg, Director of the Pitt Center for Latin American Studies, presented Passados Presentes, a digital project about sites of memories of slavery in Brazil. Part of the workshop discussion focused on how to integrate insights from Passados Presentes and its diverse and vulnerable partner communities into large-scale data aggregation projects such as the WHG.
In addition to the workshop, Ruth and Ali had the opportunity to visit Quilombo Santa Rita do Bracuí, a community of descendants of enslaved Africans who collaborated on Passados Presentes with Keila Grinberg. The community collaborators gave insights into how they brought their memories into digital projects and how they wanted their histories to be incorporated into digital systems in accordance with their visions for justice.
Members of the Bracuí quilombo played a key role in the search for the wreck of the Camargo, one of the last ships to illegally transport enslaved Africans to the Americas. Their oral histories and deep-rooted community knowledge were important in identifying and interpreting the ship's legacy. Marine archaeologists from AfrOrigens and the Slave Wrecks Project, hosted by the National Museum of African American History and Culture, are currently in the process of excavating the wreck site. Work on the wreck of the Camargo exemplifies a project in which partners benefit as co-owners and co-creators of historic knowledge.
The workshop and other activities conducted in Brazil uncovered new and exciting insights into the fields of digital justice and ethics as they related to memories of historical injustice.