The Expert is a Professor of African History, a director of Enslaved.org, and an editor of the Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation at Michigan State University. His areas of research specialization are West Africa, the Atlantic, and Brazil. He lived in Guinea-Bissau for two years and return frequently for research. The Expert also travels frequently to The Gambia and Senegal. He has lived in Cape Verde, Portugal and Brazil for research purposes. He is particularly interested in the history of slavery and the Atlantic trade in enslaved Africans. Much of his research has focused on African agricultural practices, religious beliefs, and family structures in the Old and New Worlds.
His first book, Planting Rice and Harvesting Slaves: Transformations along the Guinea-Bissau Coast, 1400–1900 (Heinemann: 2003), explores the impact of interactions with the Atlantic on small-scale, decentralized societies. His most recent book, From Africa to Brazil: Culture, Identity, and an Atlantic Slave Trade 1600-1830 (Cambridge: 2010), examines the trade in enslaved people from Upper Guinea to Amazonia Brazil. He has published in a range of scholarly journals such as Journal of African History, Luso-Brazilian Review, Slavery and Abolition, Africa, Journal of Global History, American Historical Review, and Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation. He is heavily involved in digital scholarship and has partnered with MATRIX, MSU’s digital humanities center, for a number of projects. They have completed work on a British-Library funded archival digitization project in The Gambia and several National Endowment for the Arts-sponsored projects–Slave Biographies, Enslaved.org, and Islam and Modernity.
Addiction/drugs/drug policy, Caste discrimination or persecution, Child soldiers, Climate-related issues, Coercive population control, Deportees/criminal deportees, Disability, Ethnic discrimination or persecution, Ex-combatant reintegration, Female genital mutilation/circumcision/FGC, Forced conscription, Forced marriage, Gang-related violence/non-state actors, Gender-based violence/domestic violence, Healthcare access/health systems capacity, HIV/AIDS, Journalist persecution, Land tenure disputes, LGBTQ, Likelihood of destitution or homelessness, Mental illness, Military/police service, Political persecution, Prison conditions, Religious discrimination or persecution, Government/state actor persecution, Risk of retaliation, Safe internal relocation, Sexual abuse/assault, Specialized medical services, Sufficiency of protection, Torture, Trafficking, Tribal discrimination or persecution, Violence against children/child abuse
Completed on report and testified on the phone once
Walter Hawthorne, From Africa to Brazil: Culture, Identity and an Atlantic Slave Trade, 1600 to 1830, African Studies Series (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
Walter Hawthorne, Planting Rice and Harvesting Slaves: Transformations along the Guinea-Bissau Coast, 1450-1850 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2003).
Walter Hawthorne and José José Lingna Nafafé, “The historical roots of multicultural unity along the Upper Guinea Coast and in Guinea-Bissau,” Social Dynamics 42, 1 (2016).