Affolabi Angelo Ayedoun is a Ph.D. candidate in archaeology in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is a member of the archaeological research team at the University of Abomey-Calavi. He is interested to underwater cultural heritage in Benin, to understand the role of this West African coast in the international maritime trade and the implications of cultural encounters in the past. He presented academic work on the prospects of research in Underwater Archaeology in Benin to obtain bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the same university. He has participated in UNESCO trainings on underwater cultural heritage in Africa and has taken part in underwater archaeological excavations in France with Groupe de recherche en archéologie navale (GRAN). His first participation in Slave Wrecks Project-Academy (SWP-A) in 2022, was a new opportunity for him to be trained by specialists in underwater archaeology on research methods and techniques.

Marc-André Bernier has been with the Underwater Archaeology Team (UAT) since 1990 and managing this group since 2008. Born in Kapuskasing Ontario, he completed a B.A. in Classical Studies and a M.A. in Greek Archaeology, both at the University of Ottawa. He also has a Degree in Education from Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue. He was an elected Board Member of the Advisory Council for Underwater Archaeology which he chaired and for which he served as a Board Member of the Society for Historical Archaeology Board. He was also a member of a member of the International Committee on the Underwater Cultural Heritage. With Parks Canada, he has worked on numerous sites across Canada and also participated in underwater archaeology projects internationally.

Dave Conlin, Ph.D., attended Reed College, where he conducted undergraduate work in anthropology and archaeology. He then received a master’s degree in Aegean and underwater archeology from Oxford University and master’s and doctorate degrees in anthropology and archaeology from Brown University. While at Brown, Dave began volunteering with the National Park Service (NPS) Submerged Resources Unit, assisting with the extensive field seasons at Dry Tortugas National Park. From 1993-1996, he split his summers between the Dry Tortugas and Greece, where he was doing his doctoral research on Mycenaean Bronze Age maritime trade. Following graduation from Brown, Dave took a job as an underwater archeologist with the NPS in Santa Fe, New Mexico. After the NPS Submerged Resources Center (SRC) moved to Denver, Colorado, he assumed the position of chief of the center. Dave was on the board of directors for the Advisory Council on Underwater Archaeology and the NPS National Dive Control Board and served as the cultural resources representative to both the National Ocean Council and President Obama’s National Ocean Plan. Dave is also one of the founders of the Slave Wrecks Project — a global initiative to document the shameful practices of human trafficking through an examination of shipwrecks.

Alpha COUMBASSA est un ingénieur des travaux des parcs nationaux. Il travaille au Ministère de l’Environnement, du Développement Durable et la Transition Ecologique, à la Direction des Aires Marines Protégées communautaires du Sénégal. Il a récemment collaboré avec le SWP en partenariat avec (l’Unité de Recherche en Ingénierie culturelle et anthropologie) l’URICA de l’Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar dans le cadre de la formation des étudiants en archéologie subaquatique. Il a servi dans le domaine des changements climatiques et des études d’impacts environnementaux à la Direction de l’Environnement du Sénégal où il a servi avant les parcs. Son domaine de prédilection, les parcs, lui a voué une très grande expérience dans plusieurs domaines ; terrestre et marin mais également sur le plan culturel étroitement lié aux parcs naturels. Sa collaboration avec le SWP lui a donné l’ambition de booster son cursus professionnel dans la recherche de l’archéologie subaquatique qui est rarissime Afrique occidentale.

Doctorante en deuxième année de thèse , Grâce Désirée Raymonde Grodji prépare un doctorat sur le patrimoine culturel subaquatique ivoirien. Elle a eu la grâce de recevoir son baptême d’initiation et sa formation en plongée par le S.w.P en octobre 2022 à Dakar/ Sénégal. Une formation qui lui a permis d’avoir une connaissance pratique de la méthodologie de fouille en Archéologie sous-marine, les techniques de mesures ( mesure par écart et par trilateration). Elle se sent très fière d’appartenir à ce réseau de chercheurs.

Abdoulaye FAYE is a law enforcement officer. He is in the maritime environment brigade and has specialized in scuba diving since 2011 as a ship diver and in 2018 level 2 in Morocco. He is a member of the Slave Wrecks Project and an archaeological diver. He had to work on the wrecks around the Gorée Islands to reconstruct the pieces found with the aim of dating them and if possible highlighting the origins of the discoveries. When not in service, he often participates in seabed cleaning with the private diving club. This often allows him to visit marine areas in search of new archaeological wrecks and to discover ancient objects which may have been the subject of study.

Déthié Faye is a fisheries engineer at the Ministry of Fisheries and Maritime Economy; He is the head of the control, monitoring and surveillance office of the seabed management and exploitation department. He is a diving biologist-ecologist and has recently worked on assessing the impact of abandoned, discarded or lost engines and plastic on the seabed. It works to preserve, conserve and restore marine ecosystems. He participated in exploration and documentation activities for Slave Wrecks near the island of Gorée in Senegal as part of the Slave Wrecks Project in 2022. He also participated in archaeological dives for the mapping of these sites.

René Ndiana Faye est Sénégalais et doctorant à l’Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar (UCAD) précisément à l’Unité de Rechercher en Ingénierie Culturelle et en Anthropologie (URICA) affiliée à l’école doctorale de l’Etude sur l’Homme et la Société (ETHOS). Ses recherches portent sur les processus d’abolition de l’esclavage et ses réverbérations dans certaines contrées du Sénégal contemporain. Il est membre de l’équipe In Slavery’s Wake et Unfisished Conversations du Sénégal. Il s’intéresse aux villages de liberté ou agglomérations de captifs peuplés par des Bambaras originaires du Soudan Français (l’actuel Mali) qui avaient immigrés dans la colonie du Sénégal particulièrement dans le bassin arachidier et dans la banlieue Saint-Louisiènne vers la fin du XIXe siècle pour s’affranchir de l’esclavage et/ou profiter des opportunités économiques. Il combine plusieurs données tel que celles archéologiques, archivistiques et ethnographiques pour explorer la trajectoire histoire des communautés serviles et montrer comment ce passé occupe une place centrale dans la construction des identités contemporaines.

Analisa Freitas is a Master of Advanced Studies graduate from the Marine Biodiversity & Conservation program at Scripps Institution of Oceanography (MAS MBC @ SIO) at University of California San Diego. An early career scientific diver, she learned about maritime archaeology from a National Geographic feature highlighting Diving With A Purpose and the Slave Wrecks Project. She spent the summer of 2023 as an intern for SWP at Biscayne National Park, participating in the discovery and research of a 1906 anchor from a steamship wrecked while transporting workers to Key West. Analisa is currently a dive research assistant working in Peru for Project Seahorse, headed by the University of British Columbia’s Institute for the Oceans & Fisheries. You can reach Analisa via her LinkedIn or on Instagram.

Paul Gardullo is Co-Director of the Slave Wrecks Project. He is a is a writer, historian, and supervisory curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). There he also directs the Museum’s Center for the Study of Global Slavery that that focuses on advancing research and public history on slavery’s fundamental and continuing impact on our world through international collaboration and community engagement. Since 2007, he’s served on the core team building the NMAAHC’s foundational collections as well as conceiving and crafting its inaugural exhibitions. He is a visiting scholar of slavery and justice at Brown University and is currently co-directing an international exhibition and public history project entitled “In Slavery’s Wake: Making Black Freedom in the World” that focuses on the history and afterlives of slavery and colonialism and charts pathways toward antiracist futures.

Madick Gueye is an underwater archaeologist affiliated with the Unit for Research in Cultural Engineering and Anthropology at the Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire. He is currently coordinating the activities of the Slave Wrecks Project in Senegal. Madick holds a doctorate in maritime archaeology, studying the maritime cultural landscapes of the Atlantic slave trade in Senegal, as part of a joint project between Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar and Aix-Marseille University in France. His current work focuses on the study of privileged areas for locating, identifying and documenting slave shipwreck sites off the coast of Senegal. His approach is that of a conceptual and community archaeology for a better understanding of the processes of racialization and racial stereotypes engendered by the Atlantic trade, and their impact on intercultural and interracial relations in Senegambia.

Meredith D. Hardy is an archeologist with the National Park Service – Southeast Archeological Center, in Tallahassee. She has over 15 years of archeological and historic preservation experience throughout the southeastern United States and the Caribbean. Her research interests include prehistoric, colonial, and plantation archaeology, foodways, architecture and colonial urban planning, and the development of creole cultures. Results of research have been used in the development of interpretive, education, and outreach materials, including the development of Junior Ranger Programs for National Parks across the Southeast and the U.S. Virgin Islands (Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Ecological Preserve, Cumberland Island National Seashore, Buck Island Reef National Monument, Salt River Bay National Historical Park and Ecological Preserve, and Christiansted National Historic Site).

Camille Louis is a PhD candidate at the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) whose research is focused on the archaeology of slavery and resistance, particularly maroon archaeology in colonial Saint Domingue/Haiti. He holds a B.A. in Art History and Archaeology from Université d’Etat d’Haïti and University of the West Indies (Mona Campus, Jamaica), and an M.A. in Cultural Resources: Conservation and Archaeology from Taipei National University of the Arts, and another M.A. in Anthropology from UCSC. In addition to these degrees, Camille received training on material culture analysis from the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery (DAACS) and Monticello’s archaeology department, where he currently holds a fellowship as an archaeological analyst. Camille received his first training in underwater archaeology from Leiden/Nexus 1492 through UNESCO’s fellowship at St. Eustatius. He is a fellow of Slave Wreck Project and participated in their first cohort training in Dakar, Senegal in 2022. He is also a fellow of Diving With a Purpose.

Stephen Lubkemann is Associate Professor of Anthropology, International Affairs, and Africana Studies at The George Washington University and a Research Associate at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. As one of the co-founders and a current co-director of the Slave Wrecks Project, he has been involved in launching SWP collaborations in several countries, and in developing cross-cutting programs (such as SWP-Academy). Steve has conducted research as an archeologist and cultural/historical anthropologist in Mozambique, Angola, South Africa, Liberia, Portugal, Brazil, and with African diaspora groups in the USA, authoring numerous peer-reviewed articles and book chapters; co-edited Wiley-Blackwell’s Companion to the Anthropology of Africa (2018) and Perspectives on Africa (2^nd ed. 2010); co-authored From No Return: the 221 Year Voyage of the Slave Ship Sao Jose, (Smithsonian, 2016); and is the author of Culture in Chaos: An Anthropology of the Social Condition in War (University of Chicago, 2008).

As a postdoctoral researcher in Public Anthropology at the George Washington University, Raquel Machaqueiro (PhD, GWU, 2019) works on several SWP initiatives, including: co-leading a research collaboration in Portuguese colonial-era archives that is tracing the networks of Lisbon slave traders (including the owner of the São José Paquete D’África and investigating their connections to maritime insurance and other financial institutions; launching an innovative collaboration with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation that is training Portuguese teachers to develop a curriculum on the slave trade; and a working group that is developing new public exhibitions and education programs to decolonize social memory in Portugal. Raquel is also an instructor of courses on human rights, environment, cultural heritage, and development at GWU’s Elliot School of International Affairs; and is the author of The Carbon Calculation: Global Climate Policy, Forests, and Transnational Governance in Brazil and Mozambique (University of Arizona Press, 2023).   

https://gwu.academia.edu/RaquelMachaqueiro 

Cezar Mahumane is a maritime archaeologist at the Eduardo Mondlane University. He is currently the Director of the Center of Archaeology, Research and Resources of Mozambique Island. He is a member of the Slave Wrecks Project in Mozambique developing research activities on the slave ship L´Aurore that sunk off Mozambique Island, and surveying a potential slave compound at Inhaca Island, Maputo. He is part of the Slave Wrecks Project Cohorts that is being trained in Mozambique as leading instructor in Maritime Archaeology. He is a Ph.D. student at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. His research explores the maritime trade in Indian Ocean from the so-called pre-European period to the mid-seventeenth century, with focus to Mozambique Island. He is committed to exploring the role of local initiatives on the trade and its representation on the underwater archaeological record to interpret the present-day socioeconomic and cultural context in Mozambique Island.

Aminata Mbaye is a student researcher. She holds a degree in heritage professions from Gaston Berger University in Saint-Louis. She is currently interning at the Department of Management and Exploitation of Seabed at the Ministry of Fisheries and Maritime Economy. She is a diver and student of SWP. She participated in exploration and documentation activities of the Slave Wrecks near the island of Gorée in Senegal as part of the Slave Wrecks Project in 2022. She also participated in archaeological dives for the mapping of these sites. She would like to continue her studies in artifact conservation.

Kate McMahon is the Historian of Global Slavery at the National Museum of African American History & Culture in the Center for the Study of Global Slavery. She currently leads research on an exhibition that will open at the NMAAHC in December 2024, titled In Slavery’s Wake: Making Black Freedom in the World. She is a member of the Coordinating Office of the Slave Wrecks Project. She received her B.A. in Art History and M.A. in American and New England Studies from the University of Southern Maine. She completed her Ph.D. in History at Howard University in 2017. Her current research explores New England’s connections to and complicity in the illegal slave trade and colonialism, 1809-1900. She is committed to exploring the living legacies of slavery and the slave trade in the present day and interpreting this history for a broad public through frequent public speaking engagements and scholarly production

Gabrielle Miller is a Program Specialist and Archaeologist for the Center for the Study of Global Slavery at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. In the CSGS Gabrielle liaises with various departments across the NMAAHC as well as with national and international partners outside of the Smithsonian with a specific focus related to CSGS collaborations throughout the program’s initiatives. She received her M.A. in 2016 at the University of Arizona and is a PhD student at the University of Tulsa studying African Diaspora Archaeology. She engages archaeology as just one of many tools that can be claimed and molded to create a more holistic and representational narrative of the past to re-establish people of African descent as the authorities of their own narratives, especially in spaces of scientific inquiry. Her current research project engages the expressions and legacies of freedom and resistance through material culture in an eighteenth-and-nineteenth-century free Black community in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands in collaboration with the heritage practitioners, artisans, historians, and descendants of that community. Another extension of her work is with the organization Diving with a Purpose collaborating with other Black and racially diverse divers to discover and document shipwrecks of the slave trade.

David W. Morgan has been an archeologist for nearly three decades. He received his master’s degree from the University of Alabama and his doctorate from Tulane University. Morgan worked in private and academic sectors before joining the National Park Service (NPS) in 2005 as the Chief of Archeology and Collections for the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training. From 2009 to 2020, Morgan was NPS’ Regional Archeologist for the Southeast Region, then encompassing 72 park units across nine states and two territories; he simultaneously served as Director of the Southeast Archeological Center, which provides archeological site management and serves as a repository for 10 million artifacts and their archival records. Since 2020, Morgan has been Senior Archeologist for NPS’ Submerged Resources Center, which provides submerged archeological site management and underwater/diving expertise to parks and partners. Morgan has been a member of the International Leadership Team of the Slave Wrecks Project since 2012.

Ivie Orobaton is a Researcher and Exhibition Specialist for the Center for the Study of Global Slavery at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture actively working on the “In Slavery’s Wake” exhibition project. She holds a B.A. from the College of William and Mary with a double major in History and Anthropology. Her undergraduate research was centered around health and racism; her Honors Thesis, White Plague, White City: Landscape and the Racialization of Tuberculosis in Washington, D.C. from 1846 to 1960, sought to explain how the intellectual rhetoric around racism and health in the 19th century impacted access to tuberculosis treatment and living spaces inhabited by African Americans in Washington, D.C. Her current research primarily focuses on French colonialism and slavery in West Africa, the French Antilles, and the French Indian Ocean colonies.

Yariana Rodriguez is the Research Program Associate of the Slave Wrecks Project. As the Primary Administrator she manages the project from the George Washington University. She received her B.A. in Hospitality Management from the University of Puerto Rico and her M.A. in Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution from Norwich University. She has a background in grant writing, developing and managing government funded programs, and has previously worked with several refugee resettlement agencies throughout the DC area.

Kamau Sadiki is a Board member and Lead Instructor with Diving With A Purpose (DWP), an organization committed to documenting shipwrecks involved in the Transatlantic Era of African Enslavement (TEAE) through underwater archaeology. He is the DWP representative on the Slave Wrecks Project International Leadership Team. Kamau has worked on five TEAE shipwrecks including the Guerrero in southern Florida and the Clotilda in the Mobile River in Alabama, the last ship to bring captured Africans into the USA. He is featured in the documentary film “DESCENDANT” that tells the story of the Clotilda descendant community of Africatown, AL. Kamau has conducted numerous lectures and presentations on TEAE shipwrecks, memory and resistance. He is a chapter co-author in Citizen Scientist in Maritime Archaeology: The Power of Public Engagement, University Press of Florida (2023) and published an article in DAN Alert Diver magazine (Q3 2022). Kamau is dedicated to de-colonizing the historical narrative of underwater archaeology, with emphasis on interpreting the spiritual dimensions of interrogating TEAE artifacts.

Pierre Antoine SAMBOU est titulaire d’un Master en archéologie subaquatique au Département d’Histoire de l’Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar. Ses recherches portent sur l’étude du potentiel archéologique et patrimonial maritime dans Delta du Saloum (centre-ouest du Sénégal). Il travaille actuellement dans le cadre de recherches pour les contenus du Mémorial du Bateau le Joola en cours de construction à Ziguinchor. Il a participé à des sessions de formation en archéologie sous-marine avec le Projet MARGULLAR, le programme de formation de l’UNESCO sur la gestion et la protection du patrimoine culturel subaquatique et le programme de formation du Slave Wreck Project–Academy. Il continue à participer aux activités du SWP-A pour non seulement renforcer ses compétences en techniques de recherches archéologiques maritimes, mais aussi de mieux étudier avec un nouveau paradigme l’histoire maritime du Sénégal, notamment celle de la traite des esclaves à travers les paysages maritimes.

Ibrahima Thiaw is a Professor of Archaeology at IFAN at the University Cheikh Anta Diop of Dakar in Senegal, where he directs the Archaeology Laboratory and the Research Unit in Cultural Engineering and Anthropology. He received his Ph.D. from Rice University in Houston Texas (1999). His research interests include Atlantic history and colonial heritage, material culture, the politics of memory and identity and, the long-term impacts of slavery and colonization in the making of the modern world. He worked throughout Africa, serving as a consultant for Environmental and Social Impact Assessment and, conducting research on heritage management and community engagement. In addition to academic publications, he also curated several exhibitions exploring alternative decolonial practices.