Dr Connie Thomas

Connie is an Associate Lecturer (Teaching) in United States History. She is a legal and political historian of US immigration policy, with a particular focus on the development of state and national policymaking in the eighteenth and nineteenth century United States. Her research considers how migration debates were shaped by wider conflicts on citizenship, national identity, partisanship, and federalism. Connie is also interested in the intersection of state and national institutions, policymakers, and the public in early American political culture. 

Publications

• Book Manuscript: Out of Many: Migration Policy and the Forging of an American Republic
• ‘“If they send him off, I think I shall not long be safe myself”: Contesting Early American Citizenship in the Longchamps Affair, 1784-6,’ Journal of the Early Republic, 43/3 (2023), 399-425.  

Public Engagement

Alongside her historical research, Connie has contributed work on contemporary US political culture to The Panorama and U.S. Studies Online. Connie strives to widen participation in higher education among women and other traditionally underrepresented groups. She has both organised and participated a range of events, seminar series, and workshops which encourage women to continue the study of history in higher education while providing support for those already in the field. She has also collaborated in a range of secondary school teaching packs for students and teachers with the British Association of American Studies (BAAS) and the association of British American Nineteenth Century Historians (BrANCH). 

• ‘“The Premise of Our Founding”: Immigration and Popular Mythmaking,’ The Panorama (2025)
• ‘“An Incurable Breach”: Migration Politics in the Early Republic,’ BAAS Schools Newsletter (2025).
• ‘An ‘Asylum for Mankind’? Migration in the Early American Republic,’ The Panorama (2023)
• ‘The History of US Migration Policy and… Hamilton,’ Pretty Honest Discussions Podcast, QMUL IHSS (2022).
• ‘Immigration in the Antebellum Era,’ BrANCH Civil War Teaching Packs (2022).
• ‘Women in History,’ Mile End Institute: Debating Politics, Policy and Public Life Podcast (2021).
• No Man’s Land Podcast Series, QMUL Women in History Forum (2020-2).
• ‘Born in the USA: Birtherism and the US Presidency,’ U.S. Studies Online: US 2020 Election Series (2020) 

Teaching

• The Disunited States: Contested Visions of America, 1775-1860 (second/third year UG thematic)
• American Borderlands: Land and Power at America’s Margins, c.1763-1900 (third-year UG advanced seminar)
• Dispossessing Nations: Indian Removals in American History (third-year UG special subject)
• The United States and the World, 1775-1900 (MA optional module)

Contact information

Email: connie.thomas@ucl.ac.uk

Bluesky: @conniethomas.bsky.social

Office: 311, 26 Gordon Square
Student support & feedback hours: Mondays 4.00 - 5.00pm (in person) and Fridays 10.00 - 11.00am (in person). Available by appointment.

Student support & feedback hours are an opportunity for students to chat with their module tutors about their ideas, any support they might need with the module, and to go through feedback from their assessments. 

External roles

• Communications Officer, British American Nineteenth Century Historians
• Associate Fellow, Royal Historical Society 

Qualifications

PhD Queen Mary University of London, 2024