Dr Hannah-Rose Murray

Profile

Dr. Hannah-Rose Murray received a PhD in American Studies from the University of Nottingham in 2018. Her research focuses on recovering and amplifying African American testimony (including forgotten slave narratives, oratory and visual performance), specifically focusing on their transatlantic journeys to Britain between the 1830s and the 1890s. She has created a website dedicated to their experiences and has mapped their speaking locations across Britain, showing how Black freedom fighters travelled far and wide, from large towns to small fishing villages, to raise awareness of American slavery. She has organized numerous community events including talks, performances, podcasts, plays, walking tours and exhibitions on both sides of the Atlantic.

Research

Research Interests:

I'm currently working on my second book, Daguerreotyped on my Heart: African American Visual and Textual Resistance in Nineteenth-Century Britain and Ireland. I discuss Moses Roper's activism on the Victorian stage (including his exhibition of whips and manacles); Henry 'Box' Brown's performance in plays based on his life; James Watkins' poetry book and slave narratives; the panoramas of James C. Thompson and Washington Duff; Black photography and artistry; Josiah Henson's children's book, as well as forgotten slave narratives published in the 1840s and 1850s, which have never been published before.

Transatlantic abolitionism; African American history; the Black Atlantic; U.S. slavery; U.S. abolition; enslaved resistance; Civil Rights; race; performance; networks; print culture; visual culture; #BlackLivesMatter; activism; African Americans in Britain; abolitionist iconography; oratory; legacy and memorialisation.

Publications

Books
1. With John Kaufman-McKivigan. Frederick Douglass in Britain and Ireland 1845-1895 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021)
2. Advocates of Freedom: African American Transatlantic Abolitionism in the British Isles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020)
3. (Forthcoming): With Celeste-Marie Bernier. African American Narratives and Speeches in the British Isles 1833-1902 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2023)
4. (Forthcoming): Assistant Editor for The Frederick Douglass Papers. Series Three Correspondence 1866-1880, by John Kaufman-McKivigan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023)
5. (Forthcoming): With Celeste-Marie Bernier. African American Letters and Interviews in the British Isles, the United States and Canada 1833-1902 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2026)

Journal Articles:
1. (Forthcoming): “Did You Ever Hear of Egypt or Carthage?” Moses Roper’s Visual Performative Techniques in the British Isles.’ Kalfou (2022)
2. (Forthcoming): “The Black People’s Side of the Story”, Journal of African American Studies (2022)
3. ‘“Death or Liberty”: Henry Box Brown Personificating Himself in Edward Gascoigne Burton’s The Fugitive Free and The Nubian Captive.” Journal of American Studies, published online January 2021.
4. ‘“It is to a great extent, a new book”: Josiah Henson, John Lobb and White Editorship of Black Texts.’ Black Activist Series, Atlantic Studies, 18:4 (2021), 512-525.
5. “The Birthplace of Your Liberty: Anna Richardson and Frederick Douglass” The New North Star 2, (2020), 63-65.
6. ‘“I Shall Speak Out Against This and Other Evils:” African American Activism in the British Isles 1865-1903.’ Special Edition: Strike for Freedom, Slavery & Abolition 40:1 (2020), 79-92.
7. With Hannah Jeffrey. ‘“A Colossal Work of Art”: Antislavery Visual Methods of Protest from 1845 to Black Power.” Special Issue of Journal of Modern Slavery Today, 4:2 (2019), 121-143.
8. “With Almost Electric Speed: Mapping African Abolitionists in Britain and Ireland 1837-1847.” Slavery & Abolition, 40:3 (2019), 522-542.
9. ‘“It is All A Thing of the Past”: An Interview with Frederick Douglass in 1886.” African American Review, 51:2 (Summer 2018), 81-93.
10. “A Negro Hercules: The Legacy of Frederick Douglass’ Celebrity in Britain.” Journal of Celebrity Studies, 7:2, (2016) 264-279.

Chapters in Edited Collections:
1. “Frederick Douglass in the British Isles.” In ed. Michael Roy, Frederick Douglass in Context, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021)
2. ‘“The Real Uncle Tom”: Josiah Henson in Britain 1877.’ In ed. Dirk Goettsche, Memory and Postcolonial Studies: Synergies and New Directions Across Literatures from Europe, Africa and the Americas (New York: Peter Lang, 2019)
3. ‘“Monstrous Perversions and Lying Inventions.” Moses Roper’s Resistance to the British Imagination of Slavery and Abolition.’ In ed. Andrew Dix, Violence in the American Imagination (London: Routledge, 2019).

Book Reviews:
1. Nele Swallallisch, Fugitive Borders: Black Canadian Cross-Border Literature at Mid-Nineteenth Century, (Bielefield: Transcript Verlag, 2019), Journal of American Studies, 53:4, (2019), 1062-1063.
2. John Ernest, Douglass in His Own Time, (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2014). Journal of American Studies, 49:4 (November 2015), 919-920.
3. Max van Balgooy, Interpreting African American History and Culture at Museums and History

Public Engagement

In summary, I have organized the following between 2015-2021:

• 4 online walking tours (reached 1,500+ in one year, recurring)
• 5 exhibitions across the UK and USA
• 25 talks and webinars to universities, historical organisations, museums, community groups, archives and art galleries
• 26 conference presentations
• 4 film screenings and film festivals
• 3 performances in three cities
• 3 heritage plaques
• 5 podcast interviews, 6 radio interviews
• 25 blog posts and short articles
• 2 consultant roles for TV documentaries for the BBC and Channel 5
  
  Walking Tours
  Since 2016, I have conducted both in-person and online Black Abolitionist Walking Tours in London. I hold four each month, attracting people in each virtual session from all over the UK and USA, as well as Canada, Austria and India, and have conducted tours for community groups (Black History Walks); regional councils (Kirklees), and for transatlantic universities including the University of Manchester, the University of Durham, Dominican University, California, and the University of Denison, New York.
  1. Black Abolitionist Virtual Walking Tour: https://virtualblackabolitionisttour.eventbrite.co.uk
  2. Black Literary London Virtual Walking Tour: https://virtualblackliterarytouroflondon.eventbrite.co.uk
  3. Black American Women Virtual Walking Tour: https://virtualblackamericanwomentour.eventbrite.co.uk
  4. Frederick Douglass in Britain and Ireland Virtual Walking Tour: https://virtualtourfrederickdouglassinbritainandireland.eventbrite.co.uk