Dr. Kira Thurman, Assistant Professor of German and History at U-M, explores how digital technologies such as web development and geo-spatial technologies can be effective tools in advocating for black diasporic histories.

She will highlight the creation of the wordpress site, blackcentraleurope.com, which offers a repository for primary documents and images related to the black diaspora to Central Europe from the medieval era to the present. She'll then look the incorporation of undergraduate classroom instruction into the website. In the winter semester of 2016, UM's undergraduate course "Germany and the Black Diaspora" collaborated with librarians Mara Blake and Justin Joque to use the mapping software CartoDB to think historically about Black migration to Europe. In so doing, they were able to make a history that has long been rendered invisible - the history of Black people in Europe - visible through data visualization technologies. Both of these projects - the creation of the site and the collaborative, interactive map of Black Central Europe - have encouraged new conversations on campus and on both sides of the Atlantic about German history and Black studies.