Mary Wills

I am an Honorary Fellow of the Wilberforce Institute, University of Hull. I was formerly Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute, working on the Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project 'The Antislavery Usable Past' (2014-19). The project unearthed details of past antislavery strategies and translated their lessons and legacies for today's movement against global slavery. My main research project was the creation of 'Remembering 1807', a digital archive of information and material relating to the events, exhibitions and initiatives that took place in 2007 to mark the bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act of 1807. Please see: http://antislavery.ac.uk/remembering1807

My monograph, 'Envoys of Abolition: British Naval Officers and the Campaign Against the Slave Trade in West Africa' is published by Liverpool University Press in December 2019. Drawing on previously unpublished personal papers, it focuses on the experiences of naval officers involved in anti-slavery activity on the West African coast after Britain's abolition of the slave trade in 1807. It draws its arguments from three fields of historical enquiry: maritime history, imperial history and slavery studies.