Research
Award-winning research into the intersections of memory, race, and education within the United States.
"Walking the Tightrope": John Hope Franklin and the Dilemmas of African American History in Action
An intellectual biography of the leading historian and activist.
An Age of Fracture? Memory Politics and the 1976 U.S. Bicentennial
Exploring American memory and nationalism during an age of crisis.
Other Projects
I am constantly pursuing new avenues for researching education, ideas, memory, and race within the United States. If you are interested in collaborating, please do reach out!
Publications
Articles
2026 “Thinning the Nation: The Role of the 1976 Bicentennial in Neo-Liberalizing America and Americanizing Neo-Liberalism”, Modern American History, 8(2), https://doi.org/10.1017/mah.2026.10107.
---- “Memory, Presidential Authority, and the Role of the Bicentennial of the American Revolution in Gerald Ford’s 1976 Presidential Campaign,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, 56(3), e70053, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/psq.70053.
---- “Inclusion without Reckoning: The 1976 Bicentennial and the Reassertion of U.S. Global Leadership during an Age of Interdependence”, Amerikastudien, 71(2), 195-211, https://doi.org/10.33675/AMST/2026/2/6.
2026 “Independence, Incarcerated: Prison Newspapers, Abolitionist Critique, and Commemorating the ‘Bicentennial Behind Bars’,” Journalism History, 52(2), https://doi.org/10.1080/00947679.2026.2658775
*Winner 2026 Journalism History Essay Contest. Awarded annually for the best essay pertaining to a chosen theme, “Revolutionary Moments”
---- “From Bicentennial to Semiquincentennial: A Tale of Two Celebrations and the ‘New’ American Nationalism,” Comparative American Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/14775700.2026.2679346
---- “Introduction: Shaping Histories, Shaping Identity” Proceedings of the History Lab Annual Conference, 1(1), available here.
2025 “John Hope Franklin’s From Slavery to Freedom (1947), Mid-Twentieth-Century Racial Liberalism, and the Dilemmas of African American History in Print” Modern Intellectual History, 21(4), 921–46. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479244324000544
2024 “‘A False Picture of Negro Progress’: John Hope Franklin, Freedom to the Free, and the Political (Mis)uses of Black History during the 1963 Emancipation Centennial”, Journal of American Studies, 58(5), 689–717. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021875824000379
*Winner, British Association for American Studies’ 2025 Arthur Miller Institute Article Prize, awarded annually for the best article on an American Studies topic written by a British citizen, or by a scholar in a British journal.
*Winner, Historians of the Twentieth-Century United States 2025 ECR Article Prize, awarded annually for the best article pertaining to twentieth-century American history written by an early career scholar.
Reviews
2024 “Review of Livio Sansone, Field Station Bahia: Brazil in the Works of Field Station Bahia: Brazil in the Work of Lorenzo Dow Turner, E. Franklin Frazier and Frances and Melville Herskovits, 1935-1967”, Journal of Comparative American Studies, available here.
2023 “Review of Leonor Arfuch, Memory and Autobiography: Explorations at the Limits”, H-Biography, available here.
2022 “Review of Jovan Scott Lewis, Violent Utopia: Dispossession and Black Restoration in Tulsa”, LSE Review of Books, available here.
2022 “Review of Jarvis Givens, Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching”, Reviews in History, available here.
2022 “Review of Ian Tyrrell, American Exceptionalism: A New History of an Old Idea”, Australasian Journal of American Studies 42.1, June/July 2022, 102-106, available here.
2022 “Review of Adolph Reed Jr., The South: Jim Crow and its Afterlives”, U.S. Studies Online, available here.
Blogs and Other Pieces
2023 “Tom Cryer on How We Understand John Hope Franklin’s Legacy’, John W. Kluge Center Blog, available here.
2023 “John Hope Franklin and World War Two as a Crisis of Democracy”, Association for African American Intellectual History Roundtable on Black Intellectuals and Democracy, Black Perspectives, available here.
2022 “'Brilliantly Devised, Grossly Packaged Confusion’: Eames’s ‘World of Franklin and Jefferson’ Exhibition and Reclaiming Revolution during America’s Post-Traumatic Decade”, Journal of the History of Ideas Blog, available here.
2021 “Twilight of the Idols: The Critical Race Theory Scare and the Collapsing Dream of a Colour-Blind America”, Doing History in Public, available here.
2021 “As America Looks Ahead to its 250th Anniversary, The Nation’s Past is Likely to be Just as Contested As Its Present”, LSE American Politics and Policy Blog, available here.
Awards & Grants
2026 Society for U.S. Intellectual History’s 2026 Leo P. Ribuffo Dissertation Prize, awarded annually for the best doctoral thesis pertaining to U.S. Intellectual History.
---- Journalism History 2026 Essay Contest, “Revolutionary Moments,” awarded annually for the best essay pertaining to an annual theme.
---- History of Education Society Richard Aldrich Fellowship.
---- University of Oxford Research Committee Funding
2025 Arthur Miller Institute 2025 Article Prize, in recognition of the best journal-length article on any American Studies topic by a United Kingdom citizen based at home or abroad or by a non-UK citizen who publishes their essay in a United Kingdom journal.
---- Historians of the Twentieth-Century United States 2025 ECR Article Prize, for the best article on twentieth-century American History published by an ECR in 2024.
2024 British Association of American Studies Research Assistance Award.
---- London Arts & Humanities Partnership Impact, Engagement, and Entrepreneurship Fund, to support the organisation of online events.
---- UCL Institute of the Americas Postgraduate support fund.
2023 Gerald Ford Foundation Travel Grant, to support research at the Gerald Ford Library.
---- Southern Historical Association Graduate Council Funding.
---- London Arts & Humanities Partnership Research Support Fund.
---- London Arts & Humanities Partnership Extension Fund.
2022 AHRC International Placement Scheme Award, to fund a four-month British Research Council Fellowship at the John W. Kluge Center, Library of Congress Washington D.C.
---- John Hope Franklin Travel Award, Duke University.
---- UCL Institute of the Americas Postgraduate Research Award.
---- European Association of American Studies Transatlantic Travel Grant.
---- London Arts & Humanities Partnership Research Support Fund.
2021 London Arts & Humanities Partnership Three-Year Doctoral Funding.
---- Sara Norton Fund for Research in American History, University of Cambridge.
2020 Trinity Hall Bateman Scholarship, University of Cambridge.
---- Kitty Crawley Prize for excellence in history, University of Cambridge.
2019 Trinity Hall Bateman Scholarship, University of Cambridge.
---- Frank Pollard Prize for excellence in history, University of Cambridge.
Credits: franklin and president clinton (1998), ralph alswang via Wikimedia commons;; bicentennial - photo envelope, "puuiku beach", via wikmedia commons; map - jacob monk (1852) via Wikimedia commons; books - "usamasaad" via wikimedia commons, library image Frederick mackenzie "library of Winchester College" (c.1816), telescope - "transit of venus" 1882, united states naval observatory.