Research
My research
My first book, Freedom Burning: Anti-Slavery and Empire in Victorian Britain, was published by Cornell University Press in September 2012. I am now undertaking a project on the popular politics of British anti-slavery from the stirrings of public petitioning in the 1780s to the end of West-Indian slavery in the 1830s. My current research interests include: popular ideas about political representation, particularly regarding petitioning; anti-slavery in the period of abolition and emancipation (c. 1776-1838); and understandings of the relationship between material interest and moral principle in history.
Research supervision
I welcome inquiries for postgraduate research students (PhD or MRes) in modern British and imperial history, especially projects touching on political culture, social movements, or slavery and abolition. Thanks to the Centre for the Study of International Slavery, the Gladstone Centre for Victorian Studies, and the Centre for Eighteenth-Century Worlds, we have a strong research environment, as well as excellent digital and printed library holdings, in these fields.
I am primary supervisor for the following current postgraduate students:
Nick Bubak (PhD student, 2012 - , "Imperial identity and the early Scouting Movement")
Joe Mulhern (AHRC CDP studentship, 2014 - , "Slavery, Independence, and Empire: Britain and labour in Latin America, c. 1840-1888")
Jim Powell (Part-time MRes student, 2014 - , "King Cotton in Exile: The American Civil War and British Raw Cotton")
Joe Kelly (ESRC CASE studentship, 2014 - , "Supply Chains and Moral Responsibility: Slavery and Capitalism after British Emancipation")
I am part of the supervisory team for these postgraduate research students:
Lee Atkins (Duncan Norman PhD studentship, 2014 - , "The Representation of Childhood & Cultural Encounters in the Victorian Periodical Press")
Lucy Kilfoyle (Part-time PhD student, 2013 - , "Hugh Shimmin and the Porcupine in 19th Century Liverpool")
I have been part of the supervisory team for the following graduates:
Dr. Jim Hinks (ESRC PhD studentship, 2011-15, "Other people’s children: Narratives of paid-childcare in Britain 1860 – 1910")