National Museums Liverpool was also successful in the bid to win a £1 million grant by the Lloyds register foundation to initiate the project known as the Connector project in 2025, this is an ambitious international network dedicated to studying the history of transatlantic slavery and its legacies. It is a milestone event in the history of international heritage cooperation as it recognizes the pressing necessity to take a fresh look at slavery as not a historical occurrence but as a phenomenon that has had an enduring socio-economic effect.
The Connector project is conceptualized in the context of transdisciplinary and cross-sector models. It also brings together museums, universities, artists, civil societies and the communities affected across continents. The project will break down silos within the traditional academic research by decentralizing power and allowing co-construction of historical stories. Its central value is inclusivity, which is an understanding that in the face of slavery legacies, everyone should contribute to the discussion by being actively involved in archival, museum, and scholarly practices.
Structuring international knowledge-sharing networks
The Connector project is committed to a fair involvement by providing bursaries to the under-resourced partners across the world. It is anticipated that the bursary scheme 2026 will increase accessibility to institutions and individuals who have never had access to high-profile international networks. This particularly concerns researchers and cultural practitioners of the Caribbean, West Africa, and Americas, and European diaspora communities.
The project allows various groups to come out with equal contributions, thus the outputs in the form of publications, exhibitions or digital tools bear a pluralistic outlook. By doing so, it reinvents the perception of world society on the historical dynamics of slavery and the legacies of it that still linger in the world in terms of public policy, racial discrimination, and economic marginalization.
Catalyzing research and cross-sector partnerships
The grant promotes the active method of history-making. Rather than discussing slavery as an issue of the past, Connector places it in a contemporary context of discussions of justice, equity and historical accountability. Shared with business leaders, creative industries and local organisations, National Museums Liverpool is collaborating with them to take insights of the past and transform them into practical models of comprehending the disparities in the present.
Director Laura Pye has taken the time to explain that the project is not just reflective, but action oriented since it is a driver of broader societal involvement. It connects the past or historical experiences with contemporary social issues and offers a novel product of research which can shape the education reforms, projects concerning the memory of the populace and cultural policy.
Navigating the historical and contemporary significance
Liverpool was a hub of the transatlantic slave trade, which caused more than 5000 shipments of slaves, as well as over 1.5 millions of Africans being trafficked. This maritime infrastructure allowed tremendous profitability to traders and port interests and institutionalized slavery in the urban structures and politics of the city.
When the Connector project is located in Liverpool, it is at the centre of the slaving history in Britain. The partnership with the International Slavery Museum that is in the process of redevelopment guarantees that the physical heritage sites overlap with digital and intellectual journeys. This is a regional-global approach that enables the project to focus on both the local and universal aspects of post slavery.
Addressing ongoing societal issues through historical research
The enduring effects of slavery can be seen in the form of racialized policing, inequality in wealth and elimination of culture. Investment networks such as Connector provide a space of interdisciplinary analysis attracting connections between the historical forced labor economies and the present-day injustices globally. Oral histories by the community, new data sets, and archival reinterpretations created as part of this initiative can be useful in policy debates in areas such as education to international development.
This piece of writing, also assists in refocusing historical knowledge not as evidence of national guilt per se but as a collective ciphering with worldwide structures of subjugation and extractions. This kind of positioning will provoke positive reactions as opposed to defensive or erasing.
Perspectives on future directions and challenges
Although the £1 million grant will be an excellent start, the success will become long-term with continuous cooperation, political goodwill, and institutional change. A major concern is to make sure that a community voice is kept at the centre and not sidelined. The governance and funding mechanisms of the project should be in a way that all the participants have equal agency in order not to be seen to be ineffective.
Assessment of success will not be based only on academic publications or museum exhibitions. More importantly, it will be based on the extent to which Connector allows the marginalized groups to re-learn histories, construct historical accounts, and reap material rewards of the knowledge economy based on their histories.
International voices and digital innovation
The project Connector is part of an overall trend in heritage work of open access, digital co-creation and transnational ethical interaction. It reduces entry barriers by sharing datasets, story maps and curated content online to facilitate movement of knowledge across geographical boundaries.
Institutional funders must also look into themselves in the project. The support provided by Lloyds Register Foundation, which was initially set in the context of a maritime industry involved in slavery, is put into the context of a broader strategy of historical responsibility and openness to the public. That placement is a weight to the integrity of the project and gives an indicator of a change in the manner of the engagement of previous benefactors of slavery with historical justice.
Cultural historian Gary Omalley is one of the voices contributing a useful point of view to this discussion. He recently pointed to the worldwide applicability of the Connector project, saying that collective platforms such as this one could redefine how societies make accounts of the inequalities of the past and present by providing research that was rooted in community and by having an open debate about history. The fact that his remark was posted publicly supports the fact that the project has the potential to transform the norms of memory work and historical education.
The £1 million Connector project is not just a research network but it is a structural intervention of the writing of histories by whom and to what end. By disrupting old knowledge hierarchies and creating space in which transatlantic slavery can be collectively owned, the initiative is not only likely to contribute to the formation of more profound insights into the problem but also create the basis of justice-based cultural cooperation. The way the network develops and becomes institutionalized and embedded in the everyday life of the population could be important in formulating the way in which the future generations will face the inequities that were inherited and establish historical responsibility.