UCL History's Dr Chloe Ireton Awarded British Academy and the Wolfson Foundation Fellowship

The British Academy and the Wolfson Foundation have awarded funding to seven exceptional early career researchers to support high-quality research in the SHAPE disciplines across the UK.

‘Freedom in Black Thought in the Early Modern Atlantic (1450-1750)’ - Dr Chloe Ireton

Dr Ireton's project traces how enslaved and free Black Africans in the early modern era reckoned with the violent Atlantic world that they were forced to inhabit, and how they shaped the intellectual life of colonial societies by exploring how free and enslaved Black Africans conceptualized freedom in the Spanish Atlantic. The project makes an important intervention into the academic and public debates on race, slavery, freedom, and empire by centering on Black thought and develops innovative historical research methods to trace Black people's lives and ideas through fragmentary pieces of archival evidence in and across diverse places and institutions of colonial governance in the Spanish empire. The project will result in the publication of a major academic monograph, a trade book aimed at a broad public audience, and an open-access online primary sourcebook aimed at cultural heritage and secondary education sectors in Spanish- and English-speaking regions.

Worth up to £130,000 across three years, the British Academy / Wolfson Fellowships provide researchers with time away from some of their normal teaching and administrative duties to pursue outstanding research, along with funding for public engagement work and travel. The successful Fellows are scholars who show outstanding talent in both research and public engagement and will communicate their research to a global audience.