Lewis Eliot

I grew up in Brixton, London. My mother, mixed-race and originally from Cape Town, was forced to leave South Africa in 1975 for contravening apartheid laws. She raised me with careful and racially sensitive guidance.

Thanks to her efforts and my own experiences growing up non-white and surrounded by reminders of British imperial 'glory,' I became a historian. I am a scholar of slavery and abolition in the British Atlantic world. I examine enslaved rebellions both within and beyond British borders to understand their influence on imperial policies during the nineteenth century. I use these investigations to better understand the state of modern race relations in Britain and elsewhere.

I graduated from the School of Oriental and African Studies with a joint BA degree in History and Music in 2012, completed an MA in History at Queen's University, Belfast in 2013, and a PhD in History from the University of South Carolina in 2021. I am currently an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Oklahoma.