The debate on mixed-race people is gaining momentum, and the Red Sea – located at the crossroads of Africa and the Middle East, of
the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean – stands as a privileged venue to investigate mixedness. Focusing on a timeframe
(1800s-2000s) marked by increasing mobilities and mixed-race unions and offspring (e.g. Afro-Arabs, Afro-Asians, Euro-Africans),
REDMIX investigates the roots and routes of mixed-race people and groups through a bottom-up, long-term, and interdisciplinary
perspective, to create a digital archive about mixedness in the Red Sea.
African and Middle Eastern Studies have examined the Red Sea, its mobilities, and its entanglements, but mixedness has remained
marginal in their thematic and methodological debate. Critical Mixed Race Studies has explored mixedness as a broad concept
referring to individuals of mixed descent, yet without ever digging into case studies from the Red Sea. Thus, an extensive analysis of
when, how, and why mixed-race people and groups have negotiated their position at political and social turning points in the history
of the Red Sea is still lacking. REDMIX aims to fill this methodological and knowledge gap by overcoming the partitioned approach to
the Red Sea and promoting a perspective centred on mixed-race people. The project intertwines African, Middle Eastern, and (Critical)
Mixed Race Studies; brings together a rich corpus of archival and oral sources scattered across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East;
resorts to the digital humanities; and contributes to the conceptual framework of mixedness by applying global microhistory and
comparatively investigating different case studies through synchronic and diachronic analyses. As the first comparative investigation
into the history of mixedness in the Red Sea, REDMIX will take an active part in the mission of writing a more inclusive history of the
area, one that firmly establishes the centrality of mixed-race people.