About us

The Western Sephardic Diaspora Roadmap (WSD Roadmap) is a project that crosses Digital Humanities and Information Science methods with Jewish Diaspora Studies intending to develop a working tool for researchers and archivists – the WSD Roadmap portal. This portal is an open-source, user-friendly and responsive web platform with information on documentary materials related to the Western Sephardic Diaspora and its background.

The WSD Roadmap is supported by Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe and developed by the CHAM - Center for the Humanities and the Digital Humanities Lab, both research units of the Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Universidade Nova de Lisboa, with the partnership and co-funding of the Cátedra de Estudos Sefarditas Alberto Benveniste of the Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa.

Our goals are:

• Making primary sources on the Western Sephardic Diaspora more accessible to researchers, archivists, librarians, and interested public;
• Diagnosing the state of accessibility, cataloguing, and preservation of documentary collections, and identifying the need for improvements in this respect;
• Optimising resources and sharing data with other related projects and platforms;
• Encouraging future projects; in particular, those crossing different geographies of the Western Sephardic Diaspora, and using Digital Humanities and Information Science methodologies;
• Stimulating the development of Jewish Studies in Portugal.