Research
Leverhulme Trust-funded project at University of Liverpool: Prisoners' Progress: imperial circulations of war captives, 1793–1815
War captivity in the long eighteenth century was undeniably global. Between 1793-1815, thousands of prisoners of war – combatants, enslaved people, refugees, sailors, women, and children – moved across oceans, according to political exigencies. This project provides a new historical and theoretical framework for understanding war captivity as a crucial social, political, and cultural node in histories of imperialism, warfare, and forced migration. Using historical and digital methods to track mobilities across British imperial zones, it reveals how prisoner experience differed according to place, race, and gender, and highlights the confusion and displacement of involuntary migration as by-products of war.
At Liverpool, Anna is continuing her work on convicts held on board British prison hulks in England, Bermuda, Ireland, and Gibraltar, from the passing of the Criminal Law Act in 1776 to the closure of the British convict hulk establishment overseas in the 1870s. Her work on convicts and prisoners of war brings together war and peacetime perspectives, local and imperial histories, and state and non-state actors. When we examine these discourses as one, we gain a better understanding of how government systems operated during a period of immense social, economic, and cultural change. This work makes a significant contribution to the history of punishment by using historiographical frameworks that have emerged in recent years – including naval, maritime, imperial, criminal justice, social and cultural history.
Research grants
Prisoners’ progress: imperial circulations of war captives, 1793-1815
LEVERHULME TRUST (UK)
December 2022 - November 2025