Professor Sean Kelley
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Email
skelley@essex.ac.uk -
Location
5B.127, Colchester Campus
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Academic support hours
On research leave Autumn 2024 and Spring 2025. Please contact via email.
Profile
Biography
I am a historian of Atlantic slavery and the transatlantic slave trade. My most recent book, American Slavers: Merchants, Mariners, and the Transatlantic Commerce in Captives, 1644-1865 (Yale University Press, 2023), examines American involvement in the transatlantic slave trade over two centuries. I have been involved in the Freedom Narratives Project, a collaborative effort by historians on four continents to collect, transcribe, and publish the autobiographical testimonies of Africans from the era of the slave trade. I was also the UK Principal Investigator for the Documenting Africans in Transatlantic Slavery (DATAS) Project, funded by the NWO and ESRC, which brought together scholars from four continents to recover materials on enslaved Africans and to build a biographical database. I welcome inquiries from prospective M.A. and Ph.D. students who are interested in studying Atlantic slavery, the transatlantic slave trade, and early American history.
Qualifications
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Ph.D. University of Texas
Research and professional activities
Research interests
New World slavery
The transatlantic slave trade
Africans in the Americas
Transnational mercantile networks and connections
Maritime history
Testimony, autobiography, and narrative in African and Atlantic history
Global and transnational approaches to history
Teaching and supervision
Current teaching responsibilities
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Revolutions in History, 1776-1919: How to Change the World (HR176)
Current supervision
Previous supervision
Degree subject: History
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 21/9/2022
Degree subject: History
Degree type: Master of Arts (by Dissertation)
Awarded date: 17/3/2022
Degree subject: History
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 10/1/2022
Publications
Journal articles (12)
Kelley, SM. and Lovejoy, PE., (2023). Oldendorp’s “Amina”: Ethnonyms, History, and Identity in the African Diaspora. Journal of Global Slavery. 8 (2-3), 303-330
Kelley, S., (2021). Massacre at Portudal?: Reexamining the Rainbow, Boston’s First Transatlantic Slave Voyage, 1644-45. Historical Journal of Massachusetts. 42 (1), 82-109
Kelley, S., (2020). Enslavement in Upper Guinea during the Era of the Transatlantic Slave Trade: Biographical Perspectives. African Economic History. 48 (1), 46-73
Kelley, SM., (2019). New World Slave Traders and the Problem of Trade Goods: Brazil, Barbados, Cuba, and North America in Comparative Perspective. English Historical Review. 134 (567), 302-333
Kelley, SM., (2019). DB or not DB: Writing the history of the slave trade to North America in the era of the database. History Compass. 17 (5)
Kelley, SM., (2018). American Rum, African Consumers, and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. African Economic History. 46 (2), 1-29
Kelley, SM. and Lovejoy, HB., (2016). The Origins of the African-Born Population of Antebellum Texas: A Research Note. Southwestern Historical Quarterly. 120 (2), 216-232
Kelley, SM., (2016). Recovering the Stolen Histories of American Slaves. Zocalo Public Square
Kelley, S., (2013). Scrambling for Slaves: Captive Sales in Colonial South Carolina. Slavery & Abolition. 34 (1), 1-21
Kelley, S., (2008). Blackbirders and Bozales : African-Born Slaves on the Lower Brazos River of Texas in the Nineteenth Century. Civil War History. 54 (4), 406-423
Kelley, S., (2007). A Texas Peasantry? Black Smallholders in the Texas Sugar Bowl, 1865–1890. Slavery & Abolition. 28 (2), 193-209
Kelley, S., (2004). "Mexico in His Head": Slavery and the Texas-Mexico Border, 1810-1860. Journal of Social History. 37 (3), 709-723
Books (3)
Kelley, SM., (2023). American Slavers: Merchants, Mariners, and the Transatlantic Commerce in Captives, 1644-1865. Yale University Press. 0300263597. 9780300263596
Kelley, SM., (2016). The Voyage of the Slave Ship Hare: A Journey Into Captivity from Sierra Leone to South Carolina. University of North Carolina Press. 1469627698. 9781469627687
Kelley, SM., (2010). Los Brazos de Dios: A plantation society in the Texas borderlands, 1821-1865. 9780807136874
Book chapters (7)
Kelley, S., The Bunce Island Attack of 1728 and the Transformation of the Sierra Leone Estuary. In: Sierra Leone: The Making of a British Colony in the Atlantic World. Editors: Lovejoy, P. and Schwarz, S.,
Kelley, S., (2025). A Slaving Port?: The Captive and Conventional Trades in Newport, Rhode Island, 1768-1775. In: The Routledge History of the Modern Maritime World since 1500. Editors: Morgan, K., . Routledge. 9781138961135
Kelley, S., (2022). Middle and Final Passages in the Atlantic Slave Trade. In: Oxford Research Encyclopedia in American History. Editors: Butler, J., . Oxford University Press
Kelley, S., (2019). Precedents: The 'Captured Negroes' of Tortola, 1807-1822. In: Liberated Africans and the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 1807-1896. Editors: Anderson, R. and Lovejoy, HB., . University of Rochester Press
Kelley, S., (2019). Twelve Years a Slave and the ‘Unthinkability’ of Enslaved Autobiography. In: Biography and History in Film. Editors: Freeman, T. and Smith, D., . Palgrave. 171- 189. 978-3-319-89407-2
Kelley, SM., (2015). The Dirty Business of Panyarring and Palaver: Slave Trading on the Upper Guinea Coast in the Eighteenth Century. In: Slavery, Abolition and the Transition to Colonialism in Sierra Leone. Editors: Lovejoy, P., . Africa World Press. 89- 108. 1592219837. 9781592219834
Kelley, SM., (2011). Slavery and the Texas Border. In: Major Problems in the History of North American Borderlands: Documents and Essays. Editors: H�m�l�inen, P. and Johnson, BH., . Wadsworth. 321- 329. 978-0495916925
Other (2)
Kelley, SM., (2019).Freedom’s debtors: British antislavery in the age of revolution. Slavery & Abolition. 40(2),Informa UK Limited
Kelley, SM., (2016).Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850. AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW. 121(4),Oxford University Press (OUP)
Grants and funding
2025
The Emergence of an Atlantic Slave System in Cape Verde and S�o Tom�, 1460-1600
British Academy
2024
The Emergence of an Atlantic Slave System in Cape Verde and S�o Tom�, 1460-1600
University of Bonn
2019
Documenting Africans in Trans-Atlantic Slavery (DATAS)
Arts and Humanities Research Council
Contact
Academic support hours:
On research leave Autumn 2024 and Spring 2025. Please contact via email.
