Exploring Legacies of Enslavement: a research series

This blog series showcases ongoing research on the legacies of enslavement, past and present. It features work by Early Career Researchers across disciplines, highlighting emerging scholarship, new methodologies and research in progress.

A woman artist and plantation slavery in the Royal Collection (12 February 2026)
Eleanor Stephenson, PhD candidate in History
A study of Vere Lynch, an early woman painter in British colonial Jamaica, and how visual culture supported plantation slavery while erasing enslaved labour.

Quantifying freedom (5 March 2026)
Dr Lamin Manneh, Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow (Faculty of History)
A study of how, in the early 19th century, Liberated Africans were resettled in English‑style missionary‑run villages and how the quantification of their daily lives shaped British ideas of race, data practices and colonial governance.

Black Town & Gown: The historical legacy of Black presence in Cambridge (19 March 2026)
Seetha Tan, PhD candidate in Sociology
A reflection on the making of the Black Town & Gown documentary, exploring Black histories in Cambridge through community voices, archival work and film and highlighting how spatial divides shape experiences of belonging and exclusion.