Two scholarships are available to work on the ‘Western Australian Legacies of British Slavery’ project, which aims to explore links between the abolition of slavery in the British empire and settler colonialism by tracing the movement of capital, people and culture from slave-owning Britain to Western Australia (WA). The first PhD candidate will examine Indian Ocean networks, exploring links between WA colonisation, West Indian slavery investments, East India Company activity, and substantial Cape Colony and Mauritius slavery interests. Extensive links across the region, exemplified by the East India Company (Allbrook 2014, Anderson 2012), represent important elements of this intersecting economic and cultural history. The second PhD candidate will consider how the Australian legacies of British slavery have been and might more productively be explored within cultural and public institutions, such as museums, which increasingly function as places to debate pressing social and cultural questions. S/he will work closely with relevant cultural institutions.
Applications due 14 April 2020