Research
Scholarship & Research
Historian & Scholar
I’m a scholar of West African history, the transAtlantic slave trade, African American history, and the comparative histories of slavery, emancipation, and abolition in the Black Atlantic. My specialization is the compensated abolition of the slave traffic during the nineteenth century, with an emphasis on the histories of the British Empire and the connections between the United States, the Sierra Leone colony, and West Africa.
Select Publications
“Whose Loss?”: Reparations, Indemnities, and Sovereignty During the Era of Slave Trade
My dissertation provides a comparative analysis of the disparities in indemnities – monetary compensation, territorial concessions and land redistribution, and recognition of sovereignty – that were distributed by Britain to European powers, American nation states, and West African sovereigns for slave trade abolition compliance, sanctioned through slave trade suppression treaties, and based on the racial identity of contracting partners in the nineteenth century. I also examine the moral and legal discourses surrounding redress and monetary compensation for African recaptives and sovereigns in West Africa.
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For Such a Time as This: The Nowness of Reparations for Black People in New Jersey Report (New Jersey Reparations Council, June 2025)
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Segregation in Evanston: An Impact Study (The African American Redress Network of Howard University’s Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center, and Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights, 2021)