Major Research Fellowships

Working the British slave trade
Speaking during the bicentennial commemoration in 2007 of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, the UK Culture Minister stated that ‘Understanding the slave trade and its legacy is vital to broadening our history and recognition of the challenges we still face as a society today.’ I am engaged in a study of the origins and development of slave labour in the British Americas. My research suggests that the development of racial slavery in the forms we know was anything but a foregone conclusion. Read full article.

The Masculine state: gender, religion and politics in Saudi Arabia
The status of women in Muslim societies remains a controversial topic. Drawing on history, anthropology, gender studies, and political sciences, many scholars have produced illuminating insights on questions of human rights, political participation, and citizenship. The growing literature tackled these issues in specific countries from Morocco to Indonesia. But Saudi women remained understudied due to problems of documentation and access. Since the 1970s, a few pioneering attempts have examined and scrutinised stereotypical images that continue to dominate media reporting. Read full article.

Trafficking, forced labour and the contemporary UK economy
The phenomenon of trafficking in human beings is one of the major and growing problems of our time, and is beginning to attract sustained attention from global and national policy makers. Yet, despite a proliferation of scholarly debate and policy initiatives around the issue of trafficking for sexual exploitation, there is a striking lack of research on the subject of trafficking for the purposes of labour exploitation and our understandings of the problem remain extremely limited. Read full article.