S3E3 Anna McKay - University of Liverpool

Our guest today is Dr. Anna Lois McKay (that's pronounced McKai!). Anna is the Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow at the University of Liverpool, where she is working on a project titled "Prisoners’ Progress: Imperial Circulations of War Captives, 1793–1815.” She is a specialist on 18th-Century prison hulks, prisoners of war, and forced migration. In 2021-22, Anna was a Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of English at University College Cork. She was the Alan Pearsall Fellow in Naval and Maritime History at the Institute of Historical Research, London in 2020-2021. She earned a BA in English and Related Literature from the University of York in 2012, and an MA in 18th-Century Studies also from the University of York in 2014. Her PhD, awarded in 2020, was an Arts and Humanities Research Council joint project between the University of Leicester and the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.

Anna is the author of "‘Allowed to die’? Prison Hulks, Convict Corpses and the Inquiry of 1847,” which appeared in Cultural and Social History in May 2021 and won the Royal Historical Society's Alexander Prize in 2022. Her article “Floating Hell” was published in BBC History Magazine in September 2022. Her work has been funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the European Research Council, the Society for Nautical Research, and the Economic History society. Anna is an Early Career Member of the Royal Historical Society and has been awarded The Marie Sklodowska Curie Actions awarded her a Postdoctoral Fellowship Seal of Excellence. Anna has conducted archival research in the United Kingdom, Australia, Bermuda, and Canada, and her work has allowed her to conduct fieldwork in dockyards, prisoner-of-war depots, and penal colony sites around the world.

We'll discuss prisoner theater, writing a play, the nomad-like existence of post-docs in the UK, chess-boxing, Peaky Blinders, among many other topics. Join us for a fun and fascinating talk with Anna McKay!

Rec.: 12/02/2022