SHORT BIO...I'm a UK-based writer and historian. I'm primarily a historian of the modern United States, with much of my work focusing on the history of the Black Press.
More broadly, I'm interested in the relationship between race, space, media representation and social justice across the Black diaspora. Please click here to read my full academic C. V., or scroll down for a more substantive bio. |
FULL BIO...
I'm a UK-based writer and historian. I'm primarily a historian of the modern United States, with much of my work focusing on the history of the Black Press. More broadly, I'm interested in the relationship between race, space, media representation and social justice across the Black diaspora.
These topics are at the center of my first three books, EBONY Magazine and Lerone Bennett Jr.: Popular Black History in Postwar America (University of Illinois Press, 2020); A House For The Struggle: The Black Press and the Built Environment in Chicago (University of Illinois Press, 2021), and Our Kind of Historian: A Biography of Lerone Bennett Jr. (under contract with the University of Massachusetts Press). In addition to my book-length work, I've published more than twenty academic articles and chapters in edited collections, ranging from the sexual politics of Black consumer magazines in the 1970s to the transatlantic activism of the Reverend Al Sharpton.
I'm currently working as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Northumbria University Newcastle. Prior to joining Northumbria I was a 2017-8 Fulbright Scholar in the US, and a Teaching Fellow in American History at the University of Birmingham.
I have received research and conference funding from, among other organizations, the British Association of American Studies, Historians of the Twentieth Century United States, the Royal Historical Society, Duke University, the Hagley Library, the Terra Foundation, and the US Embassy in London. In 2013 I was a Black Metropolis Research Consortium Summer Fellow, based at the University of Chicago. I was also a BMRC fellow in 2015 and 2017. In 2014 I was a doctoral fellow at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, and a postgraduate fellow at the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library. In 2015 I was a Carter G. Woodson fellow at Emory University. In 2016 I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Eccles Centre, and in 2020 I was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship at the Kluge Center.
I received my PhD from the University of Manchester in 2015, where I was funded by an AHRC doctoral scholarship and the President's Doctoral Scholar Award. Sections of my doctoral thesis received the 2014 Ambassador's Award from the British Association of American Studies (for the best essay by a UK postgraduate student) and was a runner-up the organisations 2015 postgraduate essay prize. In 2016 my thesis was a runner-up in the Blanchard Dissertation Prize from the American Journalism Historians Association.
Prior to this I was an undergraduate and postgraduate student at the University of Liverpool, where I received SSHRC Masters funding and a Christopher Bushell Undergraduate Scholarship, and was awarded the Sheila Marriner Prize (for the best undergraduate history dissertation), the Blanche Meyrick Prize (for best performance in English Literature), and the Combined Honors Arts Prize (for the highest graduation mark of any Combined Honours student).
These topics are at the center of my first three books, EBONY Magazine and Lerone Bennett Jr.: Popular Black History in Postwar America (University of Illinois Press, 2020); A House For The Struggle: The Black Press and the Built Environment in Chicago (University of Illinois Press, 2021), and Our Kind of Historian: A Biography of Lerone Bennett Jr. (under contract with the University of Massachusetts Press). In addition to my book-length work, I've published more than twenty academic articles and chapters in edited collections, ranging from the sexual politics of Black consumer magazines in the 1970s to the transatlantic activism of the Reverend Al Sharpton.
I'm currently working as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Northumbria University Newcastle. Prior to joining Northumbria I was a 2017-8 Fulbright Scholar in the US, and a Teaching Fellow in American History at the University of Birmingham.
I have received research and conference funding from, among other organizations, the British Association of American Studies, Historians of the Twentieth Century United States, the Royal Historical Society, Duke University, the Hagley Library, the Terra Foundation, and the US Embassy in London. In 2013 I was a Black Metropolis Research Consortium Summer Fellow, based at the University of Chicago. I was also a BMRC fellow in 2015 and 2017. In 2014 I was a doctoral fellow at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, and a postgraduate fellow at the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library. In 2015 I was a Carter G. Woodson fellow at Emory University. In 2016 I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Eccles Centre, and in 2020 I was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship at the Kluge Center.
I received my PhD from the University of Manchester in 2015, where I was funded by an AHRC doctoral scholarship and the President's Doctoral Scholar Award. Sections of my doctoral thesis received the 2014 Ambassador's Award from the British Association of American Studies (for the best essay by a UK postgraduate student) and was a runner-up the organisations 2015 postgraduate essay prize. In 2016 my thesis was a runner-up in the Blanchard Dissertation Prize from the American Journalism Historians Association.
Prior to this I was an undergraduate and postgraduate student at the University of Liverpool, where I received SSHRC Masters funding and a Christopher Bushell Undergraduate Scholarship, and was awarded the Sheila Marriner Prize (for the best undergraduate history dissertation), the Blanche Meyrick Prize (for best performance in English Literature), and the Combined Honors Arts Prize (for the highest graduation mark of any Combined Honours student).