During the Spring of 2024, Dr. Tom Thorpe, the guide for the Anti Slavery Belfast Tour, is offering an intriguing ten-week course as part of the Queen’s University Belfast Open Learning Programme. This course delves into Belfast’s historical connection with the international transatlantic slave trade and its pivotal role as a hub of abolitionist activism. The curriculum begins by examining how Belfast’s merchant classes were actively engaged in trade with slave plantations in the West Indies during the mid-18th century. It then shifts focus to the 1790s when the city…