PEOPLE living in Inverclyde are being encouraged to explore historic local links with the slave trade by a leading UK academic.

Professor Emma Bond, of Oxford University, has forged close links with the Watt Institution in recent years and recently returned there for an event during Black History Month.

To a packed out room, she spoke about the legacies of transnational trade in Victorian Greenock.

In her Black History lecture, the audience learned most about Greenock's role as a global hub for sugar refinement in the 19th century.

As a direct result there were huge gains for the town on the back of the trade, with families like the Shaw Stewarts, the Wallaces and the McLarens owning and running sugar plantations in Jamaica, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago.

Almost all of the 27 Scottish slave voyages sailed directly from Greenock and Port Glasgow.itself.

In recent times Inverclyde has had a debate running locally about the legacies left from this time, including the controversy around the Gourock Coats of Arms in particular.

Inverclyde MSP Stuart McMillan has also called for a national museum on the issue to be created at the Sugar Sheds.