Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery

So now you're able to go on and identify where persons are and try and find lines of family connections that way.

For us at the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery at UCL, we're also really interested in the potential of understanding community stories.

What happened to these areas where certain social networks were forged in these particular places where slavery existed? And how can we look very, very detailed or rather do detailed comparisons of across one place or even across multiple colonies.

That's really, I think, one of the great potential game changers of this kind of material, now that we have it digitized in the way that it's now digitized.

Ancestry decided that they wanted to make these records free and open access to everyone globally.

And they're partnering with the National Archives UK on the digitization and the accessibility of those records on their site.

We were brought in at the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery at University College London to help give historical context to the records.

We understand that they are sensitive records.