Staff Profiles

Lauren is a Lecturer of Early Modern History in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology.

Prior to joining Newcastle University in 2019, Lauren worked as the lead researcher on the Heritage Lottery Fund project, African Stories in Hull and East Yorkshire (www.africansinyorkshireproject.com). She has also taught at the University of Hull and the University of Worcester.

As a historian of Black and British Imperial History, Lauren has a diverse range of research interests which include coerced migrations (the slave trade and convict transportation) crime and punishment, the British maritime world, and histories of people of African descent in Britain. 

Qualifications

BA and MRes – Northumbria University

PhD – University of Hull’s Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation

Lauren’s research predominantly focuses on race and marginalisation in Britain and the British Empire.

Her PhD research examined convict transportation through the lens of the British slave trade to expose the interconnected history between both systems of coerced migration in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.

Her post-doctoral research uncovered the forgotten contributions of people of African descent in Hull and East Yorkshire between 1750 and 2007.

Lauren is currently researching the experiences of Black women in eighteenth and nineteenth century Britain. She is also developing a new project which looks to highlight the North East’s ties to the British Empire.

Academic Year 2024-25

HIS1100 – Evidence and Argument

HIS1103 – History Lab II

HIS1104 – Introduction to Public History

HIS1105 – What Is History For? (Module Leader)

HIS2304 – Crafting History

HIS2308 – History and Film

HIS2315 – Violence in the American South

HIS3036 – Public History In Practice

HIS3020 – Writing History 

• Article

  • Darwin LJ. Exploiting inter – and intra – continental markets: The business of transporting convicts to the Australian colonies in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. International Journal of Maritime History 2024. In Press.

• Online Publications

  • Darwin LJ. "Researching Race in Colonial Sources" in AM Research Skills: Interrogating Colonial Archives and Narratives. Marlborough, Wiltshire: Adam Matthews Research Methods, 2024. Available at: https://www.amdigital.co.uk/collection/interrogating-colonial-documents-and-narratives.
  • Darwin LJ. "Captain Cook's Journal: 'Discovering' Australia on board the Endeavour" in AM Research Methods: Interrogating Colonial Archives and Narratives. 2024. Submitted.