Language of Marks is a collaboration led by Drs. Ladly and Keefer to develop a searchable visual database using the entries from the 19th century Registers of Liberated Africans to reveal individual identities and origins.

This research work includes appropriate methods for collection, analysis and presentation of the sensitive personal information within these datasets.

The team designs, develops and trains Machine Learning models to apply ethno-linguistic and visual models, so that researchers and members of the public may extract meaningful information from data. The Visual Analytics Lab at the Ontario College of Art and Design University (OCAD U) designs computational architectures for the visual/linguistic database, developing a mathematical model for data analysis, and constructing dynamic 2D and 3D visual models and user interfaces.