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Dr Michelle Liebst

I’m a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and historian of East Africa (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania) on the ERC-funded project, African Abolitionism: The Rise and Transformations of Anti-Slavery in Africa (AFRAB). My work has focused on contextualising the anti-slavery legal documents and compiling biographical accounts of intermediaries involved in the ending of slavery.  

I completed my doctorate at the University of Cambridge. My thesis was a labour history of a Christian mission (the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa in Zanzibar and Tanganyika). Between 2018 and 2019 I taught at the University of Birmingham, assisting with the module ‘Slavery and Freedom in Twentieth Century Africa’. In 2020, after a period of parental leave, I worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh, where I developed my first book manuscript. My first book, Labour and Christianity in the Mission, was published in 2021 by James Currey. 

Major publications