King's College London

TASTADE will identify and study the tens of thousands of people who financed the transatlantic traffic in enslaved African people to appreciate their significance for European development – not just financially, but culturally, and politically. Up to now, the study of the significance of the traffic has been hampered by national research silos and fixated on determining the traffic’s profitability. This project synergises the expertise of leading scholars based in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France, and Brazil into a pan-European and circum-Atlantic perspective on the traffic’s role in shaping commercial, financial, political, and cultural change. This large grant will form a 36-person research team to deliver not just a new empirical foundation for scientific and public debates on the impact of the trafficking of enslaved Africans on Europe, but also a transformed understanding of the multidimensional role the traffickers of these people played in European development.

“TASTADE, a global scientific collaboration, will identify and study the tens of thousands of people who financed the transatlantic traffic in enslaved African people to appreciate their significance for European development – not just financially, but culturally, and politically,” said Professor Pettigrew

“Up to now, the study of the significance of the traffic has been hampered by national research silos and fixated on determining the traffic’s profitability.”

“This project synergises the expertise of leading scholars based in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France, and Brazil into a pan-European and circum-Atlantic perspective on the traffic’s role in shaping commercial, financial, political, and cultural change.”

“This large grant will form a 36-person research team to deliver not just a new empirical foundation for scientific and public debates on the impact of the trafficking of enslaved Africans on Europe, but also a transformed understanding of the multidimensional role the traffickers of these people played in European development.”

Total size of grant €9,999,324

Share for King's College London €2,958,902

The grant will create seven new jobs: four PhD studentships, two postdoctoral research fellowships, and a project manager.

The team includes Free University Amsterdam, University of Côte d'Azur, France, Federal Fluminense, Brazil and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

TASTADE inaugurated the first scientific collaboration between the ERC and a Brazilian university.

Context

TASTADE is one of only 66 research teams, selected from 712 proposals, bringing together 239 scientists, to receive a share of €684 million in ERC Synergy Grants to tackle some of the most challenging scientific questions across a broad range of fields.

The selected projects will be carried out at universities and research centres in 26 countries across Europe and beyond.

The ERC Synergy Grants foster collaboration between outstanding researchers, enabling them to combine their expertise, knowledge and resources to push the boundaries of scientific discovery. This funding is part of the EU’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme.

President of the European Research Council, Professor Maria Leptin, said: ‘Collaboration is at the heart of the ERC Synergy Grants. In our latest round, teams of researchers will join forces to address the most complex scientific problems together - this time, they are more international than ever. The competition was fierce, with many outstanding proposals left unfunded.”

The ERC, set up by the European Union in 2007, is the premier European funding organisation for excellent frontier research.