Hunter Harris

Hunter Harris is the Postdoctoral Researcher on the History of Slavery in the City of London at Nuffield College, Oxford. He is a historian of early America and the British Empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with particular interests in legal and economic history. Hunter holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Michigan.

His current project examines the connection between the City of London and slavery in the eighteenth century. The middle decades of the eighteenth century were both the height of Britain’s involvement in the slave systems of the Atlantic world and foundational for the emergence of the City of London as a global financial center. The connections between these two sets of activities, however, remain under explored. Hunter's research investigates not only how money made from participation in the slave economy was reinvested in London, but also how institutions and business practices developed through involvement in the slave economy helped establish London as the nexus of commercial financing, capital markets, insurance, and legal services.