Dr Nicole Willson FRHistS

Dr Nicole Willson is a transhistorical and engaged scholar of Haiti and the Black Atlantic whose research spans the interrelated fields of material cultural studies, literary studies, cultural history, art history, public heritage and digital humanities. Rooted in decolonial epistemologies, Nicole’s work explores the transgenerational legacies of the Haitian Revolution and articulations of resistance across the African diaspora from the age of enslavement to the present day. She is especially interested in the often-occluded histories of Haitian women and was awarded a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship in 2019 to pursue the first major research project on women in the Haitian Revolution at the University of Lancashire’s Institute for Black Atlantic Research. Her bilingual (English and Haitian Kreyòl) Digital Humanities platform Fanm Rebèl combines an exhibition and archive of images and texts with collaborative digital outputs, including musical reconstructions and the YouTube documentary Marie-Louise Christophe: a Haitian Queen in Great Britain (co-produced with the Haitian Chamber of Commerce) which has received >250,000 views. She is currently Project Lead on the AHRC-funded project "Building a Black Nation: Haitian Dynasties of the (Long) Nineteenth Century".

She has published widely in Journal of American Studies, Women’s Studies International Forum, Comparative American Studies (2017:1-2, 3-4), Atlantic Studies, Slavery and Abolition, Kalfou and Digital Humanities Quarterly (forthcoming), additionally co-editing special issues for Slavery and Abolition and Kalfou. She welcomes opportunities to supervise PhD students pursuing projects related to Atlantic World History, African Atlantic History and Black British, African American and African Caribbean literature and culture.