Presenting at Fulham Palace

Odile (left) and Libby (right) before their talk in Bishop Terrick's drawing room.

The Gothic Lodge on the grounds of Fulham Palace.

On Wednesday, my colleague Libby and I presented our current work on the Switching the Lens database, which compiled over 3,300 baptism, burial and marriage records of Londoners of colour between 1560 and 1860.

The database demonstrates that London was a global city during this period, with people migrating here from every corner of the world. In our talk, we presented a range of maps using the StL records to demonstrate how spatial analysis can offer new insights into ongoing debates about community, identity, social status, and belonging. I interrogated the structure of the database – what’s included and excluded, the archive’s racial categorisation decisions, which parishes’ records were digitised and which weren’t – and the content of the records themselves. Read our blog post on the Fulham Palace website for more details!

The talk was sold out and we had a lovely time discussing and answering the audience’s questions. Thank you to Siân Harrington for inviting us to present, to Eleanor Hex for introducing our talk, and to Claire Titley and the team at The London Archive whose dedication makes this work possible.