The LJMU Enslavement and Empire Project

For over 200 years, Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) and its previous colleges have supported and served local communities. Our 13 founding institutions helped working-class people get an education when it was often reserved for elites.

Despite the dedication to working-class education, our history also hides a darker side. Our University has benefitted from, and strengthened, the economy around slavery. This economy profited from trafficking enslaved Africans ('the slave trade'), using their forced labour, and trading the goods they produced.

Like Liverpool itself, LJMU’s history is deeply tied to the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved Africans.

Facing our past to shape our future

This project aims to explore how LJMU’s early colleges were complicit in enslavement, empire, and the distribution of racial science. Using ethical consideration and transparent research, we hope to face our past to understand who we are today and who we want to become in the future.

This research coincides with the 200th anniversary of Liverpool School of Arts in 2025 and is part of a comprehensive reckoning with our past. The project runs alongside local efforts to decolonise the curriculum and to widen participation to underrepresented groups.

Today, we pride ourselves on being an inclusive university. We acknowledge that we need to face and understand our history and complicity in the economy of enslavement that Britain benefitted so much from, and that laid the groundwork for continued racial injustice.

Our research focus

Our research begins with the interrogation of Liverpool Mechanics’ Institute, founded in 1825. We are:

• studying the classes that were taught
• studying the topics of public lectures
• researching the identities of the donors and members for the construction of our Mount Street Building (now LIPA)
• collaborating with local partners to build a digital resource on exhibitions held at Liverpool Mechanics' Institution between 1840-1861

This project is funded internally by the Faculty of Society and Culture and has full support of the Vice Chancellor and his Executive team.

Our key research questions include the following examples.

• How did LJMU’s early colleges benefit from wealth tied to the economy of slavery?
• Were LJMU’s early schools complicit in the spreading of racial ‘knowledge’?
• How did education at LJMU’s early colleges provide knowledge or training that supported the slavery economy? 

Timeline of project