Taylor Prescott

My scholarship focuses on slavery and abolition in eighteenth and nineteenth century Sierra Leone, which was deeply entwined with a number of West African and Atlantic World locales. It is my aim to produce a global history of Sierra Leone that attends to divergent notions of freedom, rights, and responsibilities among locals, migrants, and exiles from distinct yet overlapping backgrounds.

I received my B.A. in History at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. At Georgetown University, I received my M.A. in Global, International, and Comparative History. Upon attaining my master’s degree, I was awarded a Fulbright Research Grant to study Jamaican Maroon societies. While in Kingston, I worked closely with the Department of History and Archaeology at the University of West Indies at Mona. I also traveled to the Maroon community of Accompong, where I supplemented my research from archives with oral history. In the past few years, my research has taken me to Nova Scotia, Canada; Freetown, Sierra Leone; and London, England, a testament to my research's global underpinnings. 

My research has also been supported by the John Carter Brown Library, the Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of the Transatlantic Slavery at the Schomburg Center, the Huntington Library and New College, Oxford, and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.  

Primary Advisor: Dr. Roquinaldo Ferreira

Committee Members: Kathleen Brown, Dr. Roquinaldo Ferreira, Dr. Sarah Gronningsater