Meet our Emerging Scholars Team
- Kerry Pimblott
- Nov 14, 2024
- 7 min read
Updated: Feb 26
Alumni - Founders & Funders Project (2021-2023)
Our first two cohorts of Emerging Scholars in 2021/22 and 2022/23 conducted research on the relationship of the University of Manchester's predecessor institutions - Owens College and Manchester Mechanics Institute - to systems of racial slavery and colonialism. This research was featured in a student-led exhibition, Founders and Funders: Slavery and the building of a University, at the John Rylands Research Institute from September 2023 to March 2024.
Faiza Azam
Faiza graduated with a Masters in History from the University of Manchester in 2023.
Faiza's Scholarship
Nancy Adams
Nancy graduated with a Masters in History from the University of Manchester in 2022 and has since held research and curatorial positions at the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester.
Nancy's Scholarship
Jaden Haynes
Jaden graduated with a Masters in History from the University of Manchester in 2022. In his thesis, Jaden investigated the interplays between football, society, and politics in the UK - a topic that he continues to research and write about on his blog. He now works as a graphic designer for Watford Football Club.
Jaden's research in the Emerging Scholars Programme focused on Murray Gladstone’s family wealth in plantation slavery in the Caribbean as well as his role in purchasing the land on which the Old Quadrangle sits today.
Jaden's Scholarship
Katie Haynes
Katie graduated with a Masters in History from the University of Manchester in 2022. Her research in the Emerging Scholars Programme focused on the role of university founder John Owens in trading slave-produced commodities, including cotton from the US South.
Working with the Emerging Scholars programme allowed me to uncover real links between the University of Manchester and enslaved people in the US through tracing the stamps on cotton bales that were included in John Owens’ invoices. I was able to locate one plantation where it is highly likely John Owens purchased cotton from. Through this I was able to understand the nature of the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade and its impact on real people forced into labour and the way that people and communities in Manchester were able to profit and prosper while those who had been enslaved were not. I hope this research will carry on and those links are no longer hidden.
Katie's Scholarship
Courtney Jones
Courtney graduated with a Masters in History from the University of Manchester in 2022. She has worked on a variety of heritage projects including an oral history initiative of Black people across Wales funded by the Arts Council of Wales and the Race Council Cymru. She now works as a Political Officer for local government in North Wales.
Her research in the Emerging Scholars Programme focused on the role of university benefactors James McConnel and John Kennedy, owners of one of the world's largest textile mills.
Coutney's Scholarship
Jeevan Kaur Sanghera
Jeevan graduated with a Masters in History from the University of Manchester in 2022.
I worked with the Race, Roots and Resistance Collective as an Emerging Scholars, producing research for and helping to curate the Founders and Funders exhibition at the John Rylands Research Institute and Library.
Jeevan's Scholarship
Current - Royal Exchange Project (2024-Present)
Beth Carson
Beth is a final-year student studying English Literature and History. She focuses on 19th century British history, particularly the lasting effects of the British Empire on cultural development.
Her time studying at the University of Manchester has also inspired her to explore Manchester's history and its role in British imperialism.
Beth's Scholarship
Beth is currently working on research related to the history of the Manchester Royal Exchange.
Saachin Nur Fraser Chandran
Saachin is a second year History and Politics student at the University of Manchester. His research has focussed on the hidden resistance of enslaved African Americans on plantations, and the different theoretical approaches to addressing historic injustice.
I am excited to contribute to the important work of the programme that has an impact on the community and Manchester.
Ishita Das
Ishita completed her BA with honours in History from Jadavpur University and is currently pursuing MA in Art Gallery and Museum Studies at the University of Manchester.
With a deep interest in history and subaltern studies, this project is a perfect opportunity for me to explore, through the lens of local archives, the often unseen facades of the industrial revolution, histories of race and enslavement, the shadows lurking behind the glory of inventions and profit in relation to Manchester.
One of my essays in my MA course has been based on exploring the conjuncture between museum studies and subaltern studies and my other essay has been about decolonization in documentation of collections in archives, museums, etc. with my case study on the Ashmolean Museum (University of Oxford). My fields of interest lie in several approaches of decolonization like dialogical curating as well as indigenous curation and indigenous museology.
Aimee Eggington
Aimee is an MA student in History at the University of Manchester. Her research highlights anti-racist activism and the intersections of race and class in Britain, having recently completed a dissertation on Moss Side's Black community in the 1970s and 1980s.
My work on the Emerging Scholars project aims to spotlight narratives of resistance of enslaved persons, bringing attention to the resilience and defiance of those often overlooked in hegemonic accounts of Cottonopolis.
Aimee's Scholarship
Aimee is currently working on research related to the history of the Manchester Royal Exchange.
Amy Gildea
Amy is a MA history student at the University of Manchester, having previously completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Sheffield in 2021.
Her research explores the intersections of race and gender across various historical periods, with a particular interest in early race-thinking and amplifying the voices of women.
Jason Lee
Jason is studying a masters in history at the University of Manchester. His focus at university has been on decolonial and working-class organisation and resistance, looking particularly at early Chinese trade unionism in his undergraduate dissertation and now for his masters’ thesis, struggles against spatial racialisation, ghettoisation and gentrification in Manchester.
Jason is also working alongside a team at the Working Class Movement Library and Reclaim for their Big Flame Project. The aim of this work is to curate an exhibition at the library out of the archived material and oral history interviews of the group’s former members.
Through working on projects like this, Jason hopes academics, curators and educators can build further collaboration with communities and highlight their histories through methods like co-curation and oral histories, especially in confrontation to dominant narratives that erase and disempower racialised and working-class histories from official memory.
Francesca Magrath
Francesca is a final-year History undergraduate at the University of Manchester. She focuses on British colonialism and its role in shaping ideologies of race, gender, and heteronormativity, examining the lasting impact of these constructs on marginalised communities.
Her dissertation focuses on the Gay Liberation Movement in twentieth-century Britain, analysing how constructs of race and gender influenced notions of acceptability within the movement.
I am excited to be part of a project which is focused on challenging the historical record and effecting tangible change for marginalised communities.
Moleka Newman
Moleka finished her Masters in History at the University of Manchester in 2024. Her dissertation focused upon the campaigns waged against the racist neglect of sickle cell disease in post-war Britain. She is primarily interested in researching and amplifying histories of Black British resistance.
As part of the Emerging Scholars programme i've investigated the history of the Manchester Royal Exchange and the role of the Gladstone family, whose wealth derived from systems of slavery and colonialism in Guyana, Jamaica and India, as major funders of the institution. Notably, I was able to spotlight the Demerara Uprisings, which began on a Gladstone plantation in 1823. I believe lived experiences of enslavement such as this must be included within histories of industrial Manchester.
Moleka's Scholarship
Moleka is currently working on research related to the history of the Manchester Royal Exchange.
Destinie Reynolds
Destinie is a penultimate year undergraduate student in History and Spanish at the University of Manchester. She focuses on race in modern Britain, considering how the Black community used space to navigate the post-Windrush hostile environment. She has worked on other projects including, the Windrush Scandal in its National and Commonwealth contexts with the Institute of Historical Research and our sister initaitive, Global Threads, at the Manchester Science and Industry Museum.
Working with Global Threads and Emerging Scholars has allowed me to investigate the human side to the Cottonopolis - highlighting the slave trade's impact on enslaved communities in the Americas. Importantly, this project granted me the opportunity to reveal the diverse forms of resistance and self-determination during the plantation regime until Emancipation. I hope my research can be used to amplify the hidden voices of enslaved people to a broader audience.
Destinie's Scholarship
Destinie is currently working on research related to the history of the Manchester Royal Exchange.
Aashe Singh
Aashe is a final year undergraduate student in History at the University of Manchester. She focuses on issues of race and criminality in the British Empire. She is also a copyeditor for the University of Manchester magazine, The Manchester Historian.
Aashe's Scholarship
Aashe is currently working on research related to the history of the Manchester Royal Exchange.
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