Program Overview

The University of Liverpool offers one of the few programmes in the world that allows students to study slavery and unfree labour in a wide variety of past and present contexts. The redesigned programme addresses a growing interest, nationally and internationally, in the histories and afterlives of transatlantic slavery, including questions of activism, resistance and protest. The MA also provides for the increasing numbers of students who seek to study modern slavery in terms of its relationship to migration, human rights and other forms of unfree labour.

The programme proposes two pathways in historical and modern slavery. Your seminars, research and tutorials will range broadly, challenging you to analyse historical forms of slavery, to critique modern responses to human trafficking, to evaluate the legacies and memorialisation of slavery in contemporary society, and to apply critical and literary theories to representations of slavery. Drawing expertise from researchers across the institution, students will benefit from our unique relationship with the International Slavery Museum. You will work with the Museum’s staff to study the commemoration and memorialisation of slavery, while the broader MA programme is a flagship activity for the Centre for the Study of International Slavery – a long-standing venture between the Museum and the University. As members of the Centre, students will meet the international speakers in our seminar series and at our conferences, presenting cutting edge research for criticism and debate.

Through its compulsory and optional modules, the MA allows you to study a range of subjects that link the local (reflecting in particular the significant role of Liverpool in the history and afterlives of Atlantic slavery) with the global (introducing slave and unfree labour in a wide range of chronological and geographical contexts). External partners contribute directly to delivery and the MA draws on wider extracurricular opportunities for students to engage with slavery and unfree labour in a range of different professional and international contexts. The MA provides opportunities for students to complement more traditional attention to slavery and abolition by studying also resistance, activism and protest.