Dr Nicholas Radburn
Senior Lecturer in the History of the Atlantic World 1500 - 1800Profile
I am a historian of the Atlantic World, with a particular focus on the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. My current book project (which is under contract with Yale University Press) examines slave-trading merchants in Europe, Africa, and the Americas, and shows how their profit-motivated decisions massively expanded the trade, and powerfully shaped the experiences of enslaved people. I also work on three major digital humanities projects: I am co-editor of the AHRC- and NEH-funded project Slave Voyages, a digital memorial to the 12.5 million Africans who were forcibly transported through the slave trade; principal investigator on the AHRC and NEH funded "Towards a Digital Archive of the Atlantic Slave Trades: Unlocking the Records of the South Sea Company; an co-investigator of the AHRC-funded Legacies of British Slave Traders project. I have also developed digital models of two French slave ships that are used in museums and classrooms around the world.
Current Teaching
I am Part I director, and so I organize the history department's first year program and convene HIST100. I also teach “The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, 1500-1865” (HIST241); "Slavery & Freedom: North America, 1620-1800" (HIST240); and "Paradise Lost: Colonization and the Jamaican Environment, c1655-1838" (HIST361). I co-convene "Outreach, heritage and public history placement" (HIST491).
PhD Supervision Interests
I would welcome inquiries from students interested broadly in Atlantic World History, but especially the themes of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, plantation slavery, cross-cultural trade, and economic history.
Towards a Digital Archive of the Atlantic Slave Trades: Unlocking the Records of the South Sea Company
01/02/2022 → 31/07/2025
Research
The British Gunpowder Industry and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, c.1701-1807
01/07/2021 → 30/09/2021
Research
Legacies of the British Slave Trade: The Structures and Significance of British Investment in the Transatlantic Slave Trade, 1550-1807
01/02/2021 → 31/12/2024
Research