The Faculty of Arts of the University of Porto (FLUP) is a higher education institution, dedicated to teaching and research in the areas of the Human and Social Sciences, to cultural creation and the scientific, social and economic development of the country. The FLUP hosts the Centro de Estudos Africanos da Universidade do Porto (CEAUP) that was founded in November 1997, as an R & D Unit financed by the Portuguese FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia). The CEAUP is a multi-disciplinary research Unit which aims to apply the scientific potential of modern research on Africa.

The CEAUP has been developing research on slave trade history, slave societies and forced labour in colonial Africa, since the last seven years. The display of the results of this research are:

• Several publishings (numbers of AFRICANA STUDIA; volumes of “Trabalho Forçado Africano”);
• organisation of a yearly Conference on this topic;
• electronic database on its website.