Congratulations to CeMig associate Bruno Witzel de Souza
The project “Labor, livelihood, and immigration in a Brazilian plantation: the archives of the Ibicaba farm (1845-1975)” was awarded the Digital Humanities Prize, category Science Outreach at the World Economic History Congress (25.-29.07.2022, Paris).
The “Ibicaba project” was conducted by CeMig associate Bruno Witzel de Souza at the Institute for Economic and Social History, University of Goettingen. It started in 2019 after being selected for the Modern Endangered Archive Program – a partnership between the Arcadia Fund and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Together with a team in Brazil led by Mr. Leonardo Santin Gardenal, Dr. Witzel de Souza coordinated the creation of an entirely new archive at the homonymous plantation in Brazil and the digitization of its content, making all material available in an open-access and user-friendly platform (https://meap.library.ucla.edu/ibicaba-farm).
Ibicaba Farm, located in the countryside of São Paulo, played an outstanding role in Brazilian history. It was there that the first experiments with European bonded labor were conducted, in a process related to the abolition of slavery and the insertion of Brazil into the Age of Mass Migration. This project provides the inventory and digitizes the farm’s archives from its second administration, when an immigrant family became the farm’s proprietor (1847-1977). By safeguarding these unique and unexplored sources, the project fosters our understanding of labor relations in Latin American plantations and their socioeconomic, cultural and political dynamics.
You can find more information about the project and the award here.
