Section 3, 'Life Stories and Freedom Narratives of Global Africa' is coordinated by Paul Lovejoy. It comprises 18 contributions featuring the life trajectories of enslaved individuals who were written about or who wrote autobiographies. The selected narratives range from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century, with the largest proportion dated to the nineteenth century. As can be expected in the present state of research, there are many more narratives from the Atlantic world, including the west coast of Africa, the Caribbean and the Americas. The situations in the Indian Ocean and mainland Asia, in this case during the Ottoman Empire, are featured in two contributions. The potential for new discoveries is particularly high in these parts of the African diasporas that are still underinvestigated. The narratives of 'returnees' feature the situations in nineteenth-century Sierra Leone, the Bight of Benin and Calabar. All the situations described in the narratives attest to the individual  
agency, bargaining skills and resilience of those involved. They bring a direct textured human touch to past African diasporic experiences.