Dr Andrea Livesey

I am a specialist in slavery and its legacies in the US and the UK. After completing my PhD at the University of Liverpool in 2015, I spent two years at the University of Bristol before joining LJMU in September 2018. After significant time spent in Liverpool and Bristol, two cities that were at the heart of Britain's slave economy, I have developed a strong interest in institutions that deal with difficult pasts. I have links to the Universities Studying Slavery network, and have spoken at a UNESCO conference in the US on British Universities and Slavery. I established the LJMU and Slavery Project in 2018 and have worked as academic lead, researching LJMU's history alongside undergraduate and postgraduate students. Some of this research can be found on my website, Liverpoolslavery.com.

I have offered commentary on contemporary racial issues and legacies of slavery to BBC radio, NPR (US), and a various national newspapers.

My forthcoming book with LSU Press is titled 'Between Slavery and Freedom: Interviews on Slavery and Black Culture in 1930s Louisiana'. Funded by the British Academy, the work is a monograph/critical collection of unpublished interviews with formerly enslaved people from Louisiana that were conducted by black and writers employed by the New Deal’s Federal Writers’ Project. This book is part of a two book project, with the second book due for completion in December 2023.

My new project follows on from my PhD project and seeks to understand the intersection of sexual violence and involuntary motherhood under slavery in the Lower US South. I am especially interested in the role of enslaved midwives in helping enslaved women to resist forced reproduction and shape understandings of reproductive justice in the context of the nineteenth century.

I am interested in supervising postgraduates students working in any area of slavery and race in the Atlantic World.

Degrees

2015, University of Liverpool, UK, PhD

Academic appointments

External Examiner, History, Queen Mary University of London, 2023 - present
Lecturer in the History of Slavery, University of Bristol, 2016 - 2018