Tuesday 24 June 2025 – Nathan Richards (University of Nottingham): Cannibalising Algorithms: Traversing the Middle-Passage of the Digital Sea. Localised Histories and Global Participatory Divergence

This seminar is 12:00 pm – 13:30 pm BST live on Zoom at https://zoom.us/j/94630740130, and later posted to our YouTube channel.

Session chair: TBC

Abstract: This paper presentation seeks to bring to the fore the participatory inequalities that exist among Black Atlantic diaspora memory communities online. Drawing on the influence of algorithms in the curation of historical knowledge on YouTube, the paper focuses on the historical and conceptual notion of the Middle Passage, and how its presumed ubiquity among all Black Atlantic memory communities contributes to a dominance online, buttressed by a slew of algorithmic imperatives emerging primarily from the Anglosphere. The result is that this historical conceptualisation subsumes, or cannibalises, more local renderings and understandings of this critical period of African forced migration online, in particular contrast to the Lusophone (Brazilian) memory contingent of the Black Atlantic.