ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS
Assistant Professor of History, Erskine College, 2017-2021
McDonald-Boswell Assistant Professor of History, 2021-present
Department Chair, History and Political Science, 2019-2021
EDUCATION
Ph.D. History, Johns Hopkins University, 2017
Fields of specialization: Nineteenth Century U.S. History, Colonial North America, Pre-colonial Africa, The Atlantic World
M.A. History, Johns Hopkins University, 2013
M.A. American History, with Distinction, Queen’s University Belfast, 2008 (thesis was winner of Peter J. Parish Dissertation Prize, BrANCH)
B.A. Modern History, with First Class Honors, Queen’s University Belfast, 2007
PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS
The Last Slave Ships: New York and the End of the Middle Passage (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020; paperback 2022)
Winner of Victorian Society, New York’s Book of the Year Award, 2020
Reviews in New York Review of Books, The Nation, The New Republic, Library Journal, and elsewhere.
“Circuits of Wealth, Circuits of Sorrow: Financing the Illegal Transatlantic Slave Trade in the Age of Suppression, 1850-1867,” Journal of Global History 11 (2016): 409-429
OTHER PUBLISHED WRITING
Review of James Walvin’s A World Transformed: Slavery in the Americas and the Origins of Global Power in BBC History Magazine (forthcoming)
“How a Cuban Spy Sabotaged New York’s Thriving, Illicit Slave Trade,” Smithsonian Magazine, March 2021
“The Atlantic Slave Trade Continued Illegally in America Until the Civil War,” History.com, January 2021
“The slave trade continued long after it was illegal — with lessons for today,” The Washington Post, December 2020
CLASSES TAUGHT
American History to 1876
American History since 1876
World History to 1600
World History after 1600
The Atlantic Slave Trade
The Atlantic World, 1400-1830
Colonial America
American Women’s History
The American Civil War
The World of Alexander Hamilton
South Carolina History
Contemporary Global Issues
Senior Seminar in History
RECENT FELLOWSHIPS & AWARDS
2022 Excellence in Teaching Award, S.C. Independent Colleges and Universities
2020 Younts Excellence in Teaching Award, Erskine College
2019 John Hope Franklin Research Center Fellowship, Duke University
2018 Stukes Research Fellowship, Erskine College
2016-2017 Dissertation Completion Fellowship, Doris G. Quinn Foundation
2016 Dean’s Teaching Fellowship, Johns Hopkins University (declined), Research Scholarship, Program in Latin American Studies, Johns Hopkins University
RECENT TALKS
“The Portuguese Company of New York and the Final Era of the Slave Trade,” Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World Annual Conference, Charleston, SC, May 2020 (cancelled, COVID-19)
“Fighting Risk with Cooperation: The Internationalization of Investment in the Illegal Slave Trade During the 19th Century,” Universidad Internacional de Andalucía, Sevilla, June 2019
“Yankee Blackbirds: Transatlantic voyages of illegal American slave ships,” Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, May 2018
“Illegal Slaving in the American South During the Civil War Era,” Anderson University, January, 2018
“‘Creole Friends’: Cuban spies and British Suppression of the Illegal Slave Trade,” The Slave Trade to Cuba: New Research Perspectives, University of Havana, Cuba, June 2016
“Circuits of Wealth, Circuits of Sorrow: Financing the Illegal Transatlantic Slave Trade to Cuba, 1850-1867,” Anti-Slavery Republics: The Politics of Abolition in the Spanish Atlantic, Gilder Lehrman Center Annual Conference, New Haven, CT, October 2015
“The Role of the United States in the Illegal Atlantic Slave Trade, 1850-1863," Human Trafficking in Early America, McNeil Center for Early American Studies, Philadelphia, PA, April 2015
INVITED INTERVIEW
Dissertation interview for Process, Blog of the Organization of American Historians (2015). Accessible here
DIGITAL HUMANITIES & PUBLIC HISTORY
Project author of the digital exhibit: “Voyage of the Echo: The Trials of an Illegal Trans-Atlantic Slave Ship in the 1850s.” Lowcountry Digital History Initiative, College of Charleston. Accessible at: http://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/voyage-of-the-echo-the-trials (2014)
Grant writer, metadata processor, Lowcountry Digital Library. Accessible here
Research Fellow and Historical Advisor for public tours, Drayton Hall Plantation, S.C., National Trust for Historic Preservation (2009)
Reference Specialist/Processing Archivist, Special Collections, College of Charleston (2009-2011) & The South Carolina Historical Society, Charleston, SC (2009)
SERVICE (at Erskine College)
Chair, Faculty Executive Committee (2021-2022) Chair, Faculty Development Committee (2021-2022) Chair Elect, Faculty Executive Committee (2020-2021)
Chair, Search Committee, History, (2019-2020)
Chair, Student Complaints and Appeals Committee (2019-2020)
Faculty Mentor, for incoming faculty member (2019-2020 & 2018-2019)
Member, Curriculum Committee (2019-2020)
Member, Faculty Development Committee (2019-2020)
Member, Faculty Executive Committee (2018-2019)
Member, Search Committee, Political Science (2018-2019)
Member, Presidential Appeals Committee (2018-2019)
Member, Search Committee, History (2017-2018)
AFFILIATIONS
American Historical Association (AHA) Organization of American Historians (OAH) Southern Historical Association (SHA) British American Nineteenth Century Historians (BrANCH)