Our Team and Partners

For details about our management board and governance please see About Us. You can learn more about some of the current areas of our research. University of Liverpool faculty members welcome communication from prospective PhD students in their areas of interest, and we have a strong record of supervising interdisciplinary projects in this area.

CSIS Team

Dr Richard Benjamin - Co-Director (University of Liverpool)

Dr Richard Benjamin stood in the SOTA Library

Richard holds the position of Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Museum Practice in the School of Histories, Languages and Cultures (SHLC) and is the co-director of the Centre for the Study of International Slavery. His primary area of study is museology, with a focus on Black museology, the development and operation of Black and African American museums, and Black cultural spaces. He explores the associated cultural, social, and political movements, including the Black Arts Movement, Black Power Movement, Caribbean Artists Movement, and the UK Civil Rights Movement. He is increasingly interested in post-independence museums and national identity in Africa and the Caribbean, particularly Ghana and Guyana and the exchange of regional cultural knowledge, particularly in the Liverpool City region, and how regional museums contribute to and connect with broader, often city-centric, narratives on topics such as transatlantic slavery, imperialism and colonialism.

Richard obtained his BA (Hons) in Community and Race Relations from Edge Hill College, followed by an MA and a PhD in Archaeology from the University of Liverpool. In 2002, he was a Visiting Research Scholar at Harvard University's W.E.B. DuBois Institute for African and African American Research. Richard was the inaugural head of the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool from 2006 to 2021. Subsequently, he served as a Visiting Professor of Slavery and Public Engagement in the SHLC. He is a Trustee of the Anthony Walker Foundation, a Board Member of the European Museum Forum, part of the Tate Liverpool Advisory Group, and a member of the Non-Commemoration Advisory Panel for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Additionally, Richard is the Co-Editor of the Routledge book series on Restorative Justice in Archaeology and Heritage Studies and chairs the University of Liverpool's Slavery and Colonialism Advisory Board. 

Michelle Charters - Co-Director (National Museums Liverpool)

Michelle Charters OBE stood in the SOTA Library

Michelle Charters is the head of the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool, being the first Black Woman to be appointed to this role. She is a community activist and previously worked for 18 years as the CEO of the Kuumba Imani Millennium Centre in Toxteth, Liverpool. She is the Founding Chair of the Merseyside Black History Month Group and has been a trustee on the board of National Museums Liverpool for the past five years, prior to her appointment. Throughout her career, she has been, and continues to be committed to uncovering and promoting the truth of Black experiences, in a collective fight for justice.

Dr Mary Booth - Centre Manager (University of Liverpool)

Dr Mary Booth stood in the SOTA Library

Dr Mary Booth specializes in American and British studies, museums studies and heritage tourism studies. Her most recent contribution to the field includes a working manuscript focused on tracing the evolution of museological sites, specifically identifying different catalysts for interpretive change and evaluating the longevity and reception of representational developments. Additionally, she has published on topics including race and gender as well as academic pedagogy and continues to the contribute to the ongoing research surrounding university benefactors and their financial links to historic racial slavery in both Manchester and Liverpool.   

Phil Jones - Marketing Administrator (University of Liverpool)

Phil sits within the History, Languages and Cultures Marketing, Recruitment and Events Team, where he facilitates the CSIS marketing output and content. 

CSIS Fellows

Dr Leona Vaughn

Leona gained her PhD in June 2019 from the University of Liverpool Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology. Her thesis is a sociological qualitative, multi-phase inquiry into how practitioners imagine and operationalise the safeguarding 'risk-work' for identifying and working with ‘childhood radicalisation’ (PREVENT).

She has extensive experience as a professional and academic researcher in the field of equalities and social justice in public and charity sectors in the UK and operating internationally.

Awarded a Derby Research Fellowship for the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Research Theme of 'Slavery & Unfree Labour' in January 2020, Leona undertook a leave of absence as the Vulnerable Populations Lead at the Finance Against Slavery & Trafficking initiative at United Nations University Centre for Policy Research (2021-2024). Her expertise is the development of innovative and inclusive interdisciplinary approaches to addressing, mitigating and repairing harm in the design and delivery of research and knowledge production, addressing issues of coloniality, power and marginalisation. She won the 2024 Alan Beeston Early Career Researcher of the Year Award.

Beatriz Marin-Aguilera

Beatriz is a historical archaeologist working on colonialism, slavery, subalternity, and gender in the Western Mediterranean and in the Americas, with a particular focus on indigeneity and decolonisation. She has led and participated in fieldwork projects in Antigua and Barbuda, Chile, Cyprus, Ethiopia, Italy, Morocco, and Spain. She has a combined background of History (BA-Licenciatura Universidad Complutense, Madrid) and Archaeology (MPhil, PhD, Universidad Complutense, Madrid). In October 2022, she joined the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Liverpool after having lived in Spain, Egypt, Italy, the UK, Belgium, and the US.

Honorary Professors 

Professor Robert Beckford

Robert is an interdisciplinary activist-scholar researching/transforming across and within diverse media (television and radio documentaries, radio drama, written texts and music production). He is engaged in knowledge exchange/restorative justice projects with public- and private-sector partners, international aid agencies, local government, arts organisations, and broadcast media in the UK and the USA. He has won numerous international awards for my work, including a BAFTA, the Jamaica Diaspora Award, and the Black Pentecostal Scholar's Award. He has expertise in religious-cultural criticism, decolonising theology, victim-led reparations, and community-engagement pedagogies. 

Professor Charles Forsdick (University of Cambridge)
Charles Forsdick studied French as an undergraduate at New College, Oxford. After graduating, he completed a PhD at Lancaster on the author, traveller and naval doctor Victor Segalen, under the supervision of Dr David Steel. Following his first post as Lecturer in French at the University of Glasgow, he moved to the James Barrow Chair of French at the University of Liverpool in 2001, a post he held until his move to Cambridge in 2023. He was President of the Society for French Studies, 2012-14, Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of International Slavery, 2010-13, and served as chair of sub-panel D26 (Modern Languages and Linguistics) for REF2021. From 2012 until 2021, he was AHRC Theme Leadership Fellow for 'Translating Cultures'. A Member of the Academy of Europe, he is also currently Lead Fellow for Languages at the British Academy. Charles is Adjunct Professor in Translation Studies, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University and Honorary Professor in the Centre for the Study of International Slavery at the University of Liverpool. He edits or co-edits three series for Liverpool University Press: 'Contemporary French and Francophone Cultures', ‘World Writing in French: New Archipelagoes’ and the 'Glissant Translation Project'. He also edits a series for Anthem Press called 'Anthem Studies in Travel'. Professor Forsdick is Chair of the Advisory Council of the Institute of Modern Languages Research. Since 2019, he has been a member of the conseil scientifique of the Fondation pour la Mémoire de l’Esclavage. He sits on a number of journal advisory boards, including Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, Australian Journal of French Studies, Irish Journal of French Studies, Journal of Romance Studies, Studies in Travel Writing and Francosphères, and is an Associate Editor of Language, Society and Policy and CFC Intersections.

Partners

Alt text: A woman walking around the International Slavery Museum.

The Centre for the Study of International Slavery was founded as a partnership between the International Slavery Museum at National Museums Liverpool and the University of Liverpool. However, we are part of a family of organisations promoting research into past and contemporary forms of slavery or forced labour, and we welcome collaborations with partners across the world. Please see below partners and collaborators who have recently worked on programmes and initiatives with us.

Research centres, institutes and networks

Research projects

Schools and universities

  • Chevening School
  • Gettysburg College
  • Leeds Beckett University
  • Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine
  • Liverpool John Moores University
  • Manchester Metropolitan University
  • Task Force, University of Alabama
  • University of Georgia
  • University of Manchester
  • University of Reading
  • University of Sao Paolo, Brazil
  • University of St Andrews
  • University of Western Australia.

Scholarly societies, publishers and journals

Museums and heritage sites

Community and charitable groups

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