Professor Richard B. Allen, Framington University, USA

Professor Richard B. Allen is an internationally-known scholar who works on the social and economic history of Mauritius, slavery and indentured labour in the colonial plantation world, and slave trading in the Indian Ocean. He is the recipient of two Fulbright research awards and prestigious research fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Endowment for the Humanities. His publications include Slaves, Freedmen and Indentured Laborers in Colonial Mauritius (Cambridge University Press, 1999); European Slave Trading in the Indian Ocean, 1500-1850 (Ohio University Press, 2014); many chapters in books published in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere; numerous articles in prominent academic journals including Journal of African History, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth, Journal of Social History, Journal of World History, Slavery and Abolition, and Revue française d’histoire d’outre-mer; and articles in encyclopedias on Africa, the Indian Ocean, slavery, indentured labour, and global human migration. He co-authored the successful applications to designate the Aapravasi Ghat and the Le Morne Cultural Landscape in Mauritius as UNESCO World Heritage Sites and to inscribe the indentured immigration records of the Republic of Mauritius on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register. He also serves as editor of Ohio University Press’s Indian Ocean Studies series and is co-organizing the international conference on slavery in Asia to be held at Leiden University in June, 2017.

Professor Myriam Cottias, Director of CRPLC at CNRS, Paris
Myriam COTTIAS, historienne du fait colonial, spécialiste de l’esclavage dans l’espace caribéen, est directrice de recherche au CNRS (CRPLC, Université des Antilles et de la Guyane). Elle a été coordinatrice du programme EURESCL dans le cadre du 7ème PCRD de la Commission européenne (www.eurescl.eu), membre nommée du Comité National du CNRS (2014-2016) et Présidente du Comité National sur la Mémoire et l’Histoire de l’Esclavage (2013-2016). A publié entre autres : Les dépendances serviles : une approche comparée, ouvrage collectif avec Bernard Vincent et Sandro Stella, Paris : L’Harmattan, 2006; D'une abolition, l'autre. Anthologie raisonnée de textes sur la seconde abolition de l'esclavage dans les colonies françaises, Marseille : Agone Editeur, 1999 ; avec Arlette Farge, De la nécessité d’adopter l’esclavage en France : un texte anonyme de 1797, Paris : Bayard, 2007 ; La question noire. Histoire d’une construction coloniale, Paris : Bayard, 2007. Le corps, la famille et l’Etat, avec Laura Downs et Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, et avec la collaboration de Gérard Jorland, Rennes : Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2010 ; Les Traites et les esclavages. Perspectives historiques et contemporaine, avec Antonio de Almeida Mendes, Elisabeth Cunin, 2010, Paris : Karthala. Sur la question du genre, elle vient de publier, en collaboration avec Madeleine Dobie, Relire Mayotte Capécia : une femme des Antilles dans l’espace colonial Français, Paris : Armand Colin, 2012.


Dr. Thomas Vernet, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
Thomas Vernet is associate professor of medieval and early modern African history at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Currently he is director of the IFAS-Research in Johannesburg, a combined Ministère des Affaires Etrangères and CNRS institute. He has been associated with the CRSI and the works of the Truth and Justice Commission since 2010. In April 2011 he co-organised with Vijaya Teelock the conference Slave trade, slavery and transition to indenture in Mauritius and the Mascarenes 1715-1840 (TJC/CRSI/University of Mauritius). His research focuses on the history of the East African coast before the 1820s. Among other works, he has published several studies on slavery in the Swahili world as well as the slave trade from East Africa and Madagascar.
Publications include:
V. Teelock and T. Vernet (eds.), Traites, esclavage et transition vers l’engagisme. Perspectives nouvelles sur les Mascareignes et le sud-ouest de l’océan Indien, 1715-1848, Réduit, University of Mauritius – CRSI / UoMPress, 2015.
T. Vernet and P. Beaujard (eds.), L’Afrique orientale et l’océan Indien : connexions, réseaux d’échanges et globalisation (Ier millénaire – XIXe siècle) / Africa and the Indian Ocean: Connections, Exchange Networks and Globalisation (first millennium - nineteenth Century), thematic issue, Afriques, 06 | 2015, URL : http://afriques.revues.org/1719.
H. Médard, M.-L. Derat, T. Vernet and M.P. Ballarin (eds.), Traites et esclavages en Afrique orientale et dans l’océan Indien, Paris, Karthala / CIRESC, 2013.
T. Vernet, V. Teelock, Y. Argot-Nayekoo, et alii, Inventaire sélectif sur l’esclavage / Select Guide to Sources on Slavery. Archives Nationales de France, Fonds Colonies C4, Île de France, volume 1 1714-1783, Réduit and Port-Louis, University of Mauritius - CRSI/ Truth and Justice Commission, 2011.
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Professor Nigel Worden, University of Cape Town, RSA
Nigel Worden was King George V Professor of History at the University of Cape Town.  He is a specialist on the history of the early Cape Colony, especially Cape slavery and its legacy, and a more recent focus of his work is placing the Cape in the wider context of the early modern Indian Ocean world.  His main publications include Slavery in Dutch South Africa (1985), Cape Town: The Making of a City (1998) and Cape Town Between East and West: Social Identities in a Dutch Colonial Town (2012).

Professor Benigna Zimba, Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, Maputo
Benigna Zimba is Professor, Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, History Department, Maputo – Mozambique. Her current areas of study include: Women and gender, Trade, slave trade and slavery within the overall context of precolonial Mozambique and South-eastern Africa and the global slave Diaspora in the Indian Ocean; Oral history, memory, culture and identity and its contribution to African historiography; Higher Education in Africa. Publications include: Percurso de Maria da Luz Dai Guebuza; Slave Routes and Oral Tradition in Southeastern Africa; Mulheres invisíveis: O género e as políticas comerciais no sul de Moçambique, 1720- 1830; British Abolition in Southeast Africa: the first 50 years (with Edward Alpers); Family and Women’s Role in the process of Peace Construction in Mozambique, 1992-2002. She conceptualized the project: Intercontinental Slavery Museum Project, currently in process of implementation in Mauritius.
 
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