Events
2Mapathon: Maps as a Source for Surinamese History
Hands-on mapathon at the Bushuis / Oost-Indisch Huis in Amsterdam, where participants georeferenced historic maps, enriched Wikidata, and annotated archival sources.
Sranan Story Collective: Starting a Citizen Science Project on Surinamese Heritage
Presentation at the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA) 2026 conference in Oulu, Finland, on the citizen science ambitions and methods of the Suriname Time Machine.
Scientific Articles & Book Chapters
4Defeating the Haystack: lessons learned from extracting entities from Dutch Curaçao civil certificates, 1879–1949
Article on a workflow for transforming unstructured historical civil records from Curaçao into a structured database using handwritten text recognition, regular expressions, large language models, and citizen-science validation.
The Wijkregisters of Paramaribo, 1828–1847: A New Research Database on Urban Life during Slavery
Data article describing how the nineteenth-century population registers of Paramaribo were digitized and converted into a research database, with descriptive statistics for 1846.
An Invitation to a Trans-Caribbean Data Project: A Pipeline for Historical Caribbean Population Databases
Article presenting the HDSC pipeline for creating open-access historical population databases across the Caribbean, discussing workflows, data linking, and an invitation to collaborate on a trans-Caribbean scale.
Citizen Science and Participatory Engagement with a Contentious Past: The Historical Database of Suriname and the Caribbean
Book chapter exploring how citizen science offers meaningful engagement with a painful colonial past, through the case of the Historical Database of Suriname and the Caribbean (HDSC).
Scientific Presentations
12The Suriname Time Machine as a Reparative Digital Infrastructure
Zenodo publication of the presentation delivered at the 57th Annual Conference of the Association of Caribbean Historians (ACH).
Linking Surinamese Heritage Data: Building a Community-Focused Platform
Poster presented at Digital Humanities Benelux 2026 on linking Surinamese heritage data in a community-focused platform approach.
Storytellers by Design Workshop (DH Benelux · Maastricht Edition)
Workshop at DH Benelux 2026 featuring Suriname Time Machine as one of the case studies. Jona Schlegel was part of the organizing team together with Federica Di Biase and Kelly Gillikin Schoueri.
Peperpot Case Study (Storytellers by Design Workshop Materials)
Workshop case-study material used during DH Benelux 2026, including a Suriname Time Machine case from Peperpot.
A Reparative Digital Infrastructure for Suriname's Past: Adapting the Time Machine Paradigm for a Postcolonial Context
Conference presentation at the Annual Meeting of the Association of Caribbean Historians.
The Suriname Time Machine: Mapping Visual Heritage
Presentation in the Rijksmuseum lecture and symposium program on 2D and 3D photography.
Bridging the Archive Gap: Suriname Time Machine (STM). Linked Open Data for Humanising Colonial Archives
Poster presented at The Indentured Labour Route at the Crossroads conference on STM and linked open data for humanising colonial archives.
Suriname Time Machine & Sranan Story Collective: voortbouwen en verbinden
Presentation at the participants' meeting of the Historical Database of Suriname and the Caribbean on how Suriname Time Machine and the Sranan Story Collective build on existing citizen-science work and connect datasets, places, and communities.
Sranan Story Collective: Starting a Citizen Science Project on Surinamese Heritage
Presentation at ECSA 2026 on how the Suriname Time Machine engages communities in citizen science around Surinamese heritage, combining georeferencing, Wikidata editing, and map annotation.
Modelling the Enslaved as Historical Persons
Academic talk on modelling enslaved people as historical persons within the PiCo framework, presented at a dedicated research event.
New Findings in the Slave Demography of Suriname
Academic presentation discussing new demographic findings from the Suriname slave registers, presented by a multi-institutional team of researchers.
Modelling the Enslaved as Historical Persons: Extending the Persons in Context (PiCo) Model to Fit Enslaved Individuals
Conference abstract presented at Digital Humanities Benelux 2025 on extending the PiCo data model to represent enslaved individuals as historical persons using Linked Open Data.
Published Data
3Plantations Surinaamse Almanakken (Version 2.1)
Updated dataset release with improved data and metadata for the plantation records transcribed from the Surinaamsche Almanak (1818–1847) and the Almanak voor de Nederlandsche West-Indische bezittingen (1856–1861).
Plantations Surinaamse Almanakken
Dataset of plantation records transcribed from the Surinaamsche Almanak (1818–1847) and the Almanak voor de Nederlandsche West-Indische bezittingen (1856–1861), linked to Wikidata entities.
IIIF Historic Maps of Suriname
A curated IIIF collection of digitized historic maps of Suriname from the university libraries of Amsterdam and Leiden, available for georeferencing and annotation.
Published Code
2Suriname Time Machine: Citizen Science Website
Open-source Next.js website for the Suriname Time Machine project: participatory science events, interactive project gallery, annotation dashboard, and bilingual content.
IIIF Suriname: Map Collection Pipeline
Python scripts for generating and maintaining the IIIF manifest of digitized historic Suriname maps from multiple archives.
Media & Commentary
5The Suriname Time Machine Makes Colonial History Accessible Down to the Smallest Details
Article on isgeschiedenis.nl about how the Suriname Time Machine project at the Huygens Institute connects historical sources to make the colonial history of Suriname tangible and traceable for a broad audience.
First Suriname Workshop/Mapathon a Great Success
Internal news article on the KNAW Humanities Cluster intranet reporting on the success of the first Suriname Time Machine mapathon workshop.
A Web of Maps and Stories Brings the Past to Life
Media article from the University of Amsterdam Faculty of Humanities about the Suriname Time Machine mapathon and collaborative historical mapping practices.
A Web of Maps and Stories Brings the Past to Life
Article on the Amsterdam Humanities Hub about the Suriname Time Machine mapathon at the UvA Bushuis, where a diverse group of participants georeferenced and annotated historical maps of Suriname using open tools such as Allmaps.
Paramaribo Ward Registers from the Slavery Era Converted into Research Database
News article on curacao.nu reporting how researchers converted the Paramaribo ward registers (1828–1847) into a structured research database, making this important historical source on the population of Suriname's capital during slavery more accessible.