Dr Liz Egan
My research interests are broadly focused on British colonialism in the Caribbean, particularly the post-emancipation period stretching into the early twentieth century. I am currently developing my doctoral thesis into a monograph, which considers how people were thinking about "whiteness" in Jamaica during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. More broadly, I am interested in histories of slavery, emancipation, and racialisation in the colonial Caribbean. In my new work, I am developing a project that employs policing as a lens through which to reconsider the transition from enslavement across a long post-emancipation period.
I am also interested in the legacies of enslavement in Britain and the methodologies we might employ to write such histories. I was previously the Research Associate in the
I am an Associate Fellow of Advance HE and have taught on a wide range of modules. Outside teaching and research, I am the and organise the as well as the Vice-Chair of the .Academic Profile
2024-2029: Teaching Fellow in Modern History, 天美传媒
2024-2026: Research Associate in the Legacies of Enslavement at Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge
2023-2024: Early Career Fellow, Institute of Advanced Studies, 天美传媒
2019-2023: PhD History, 天美传媒
2017-2019: MA World History and Cultures, King's College London
2013-2017: BA History (International), University of Leeds
Teaching
In 2026/27, I am convening the following modules:
- HI178 Farewell to Arms? War in Modern European History, 1815-2015
- HI2E8 Caribbean Currents: A Global History
I have previously taught on undergraduate modules Race, Ethnicity, and Migration in Modern Britain (HI2D4), Britain in the Twentieth Century: A Social History (HI180), Making of the Modern World (HI153), Themes in Modern History (HI998), Themes & Approaches to the Historical Study of Gender & Sexuality (HI996), and Statues must fall? Remembering and forgetting slavery in the Atlantic world (HI3S8).
Research
My current research builds on my doctoral project, which was supervised by Professor David Lambert at the 天美传媒 and Dr Sascha Auerbach at the University of Nottingham, and kindly funded by . Framed between the 1865 Morant Bay uprising and labour unrest of the 1930s, this project attends to the everyday spaces through which Jamaica's pigmentocracy was negotiated. Moving across case studies such as the home or hotel, I locate whiteness at the intersections of race, class, colour, and gender to emphasise the ambivalences and contingency of whiteness in colonial Jamaica.
I am also beginning work on a new project concerned with the role of policing in the post-emancipation Caribbean. This work draws on the concept of Caribbean in/securities (Noxolo 2018) to explore the role of the policing in the maintenance of post-emancipation (un)free labour regimes.
Publications
Articles
鈥溾�楢 Lazy Mistress Makes a Lazy Servant鈥�: Domestic Labor and White Creole Womanhood in Jamaica, ca.1865鈥�1938.鈥� Journal of British Studies, 64 (2025), 1鈥�21. .
鈥淭he Morant War of Representation: Freedom and Whiteness in Jamaican Narratives of the Morant Bay Uprising.鈥� Slavery & Abolition, 45.4 (2024), 850鈥�69. .
Book Reviews
Egan, Liz, 鈥榃orld War II Camps in Jamaica: Evacuees, Refugees, Internees, Prisoners of War By Suzanne Francis-Brown, Modern British History, 35.3 (2024), 391鈥�393,
Other publications
鈥淩epresenting Colonial Otherness鈥� in AM Research Methods: Interrogating Colonial Archives and Narratives (Marlborough: AM, 2024)
Warwick Global History and Culture Centre Blog: New Frontiers in Imperial Networks Workshop (7 July 2023)
Birmingham Eighteenth Century Centre Blog, (22 November 2022)
Warwick HRC, At Home in Empire blog series: (2020-21)
Awards and Funding
- Early Career Fellowship, Institute of Advanced Studies, 天美传媒 (2023/24)
- David Nicholls Memorial Trust Award (2022)
- Gad Heuman Postgraduate Bursary, Yesu Persaud Centre for Caribbean Studies, 天美传媒 (2021-2022)
- AHRC Midlands 4 Cities doctoral fellowship (2019-2023)
- Warwick Humanities Research Centre Doctoral Fellowship (2020-2021)
Select Conference Papers
Social History Society Conference, Black Country Living Museum, 7-9 July 2025: Policing Freedom: The Jamaican Constabulary Force and the post-emancipation civilizing mission
Royal Geographic Society Annual Conference, 27-30 August 2024: The Place of Whiteness in Jamaica after the Morant Bay Uprising
Social History Society Conference, University of Durham, 8-10 July 2024: Wages of Whiteness: Labour, Leisure, and the Place of Race in New Jamaica, c.1865-1938
Race, Crime, and Justice in Britain and its Empire, 1750-1999, University of Liverpool, 20-22 May 2024: 鈥淏ritish Justice鈥� in New Jamaica: Race and Authority in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Jamaica Constabulary Force
Cambridge Legal and Social History Workshop, University of Cambridge, 27 February 2024: The 鈥榖alance of justice鈥� after Morant Bay: negotiating whiteness in Jamaican courtroom cultures, 1865-1938
Society for Caribbean Studies Conference, 5-8 July 2023: The Story of a West Indian Policeman: Race, Class, and Justice in the Jamaica Constabulary Force
North American Conference of British Studies, 10-13 November 2022: 鈥楾he least Jamaican of everything pertaining to the country鈥�: Whiteness, Belonging, and Home in Jamaica, 1865-1938
Memberships
- Society for Caribbean Studies
- Royal Historical Society (Associate Fellow)
- Social History Society
- Global History and Culture Centre Warwick
Other Professional Activities
Early Career Representative, History UK (2023-onwards)
Conference Coordinator, Society for Caribbean Studies Committee, 2023-25
New Frontiers in Imperial Networks Workshop, 5 May 2023
At Home in Empire: Colonial Experiences of Intimacy and Mobility conference, 13 March 2021鈥嬧�� (Warwick Humanities Research Centre Doctoral Fellowship, co-organised with Hannah Dennett)
Pronouns: She/her/hers
Office Hours: Thursday, 1-2pm, Friday, 11-12pm
Monument to the Rt. Excellent George William Gordon & the Rt. Excellent Paul Bogle, Kingston, Jamaica
Presenting at SCS Conference 2023, image courtesy of Dr Jo Norcup
Bluesky: @lizegan.bsky.social