Dr Linsey Mcmillan (MA, PhD)

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Biography

Background

I grew up in a small town in Central Scotland and completed my undergraduate degree at the University of Glasgow in 2013. Following this, I was awarded a Graduate Teaching Assistantship by the British Association for American Studies and I spent two years studying for a Masters degree at the University of New Hampshire, USA. 

In 2024 I received my PhD from the University of Edinburgh, funded by the AHRC/SGSAH Doctoral Training Partnership, under the supervision of Professor Diana Paton, Professor Simon Newman, and Dr Christine Whyte.

In 2026, I joined HCA as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the project 'Voices in Slavery's Archive,' which seeks to digitize, catalogue, and analyse the judicial testimony of thousands of enslaved individuals from nineteenth-century British Guiana (present day Guyana) whose voices are captured in the Reports of the Fiscals and Protectors of Slaves. 

Qualifications

Master of Arts (Hons), University of Glasgow, 2013

Master of Arts, University of New Hampshire, 2015

PhD, University of Edinburgh, 2024

Research summary

Places: 

  • Caribbean (British)
  • Britain & Ireland
  • Africa
  • Latin America
  • North America

Themes: 

  • Medicine
  • Disability
  • Imperialism
  • Labour
  • Migration
  • Society

Periods: 

  • Eighteenth Century
  • Nineteenth Century

Current research interests

I am a historian of the colonial British Caribbean, and my work explores the intersections between slavery, medicine, disability, and labour. My research has focused on the judicial testimonies of enslaved people whose voices were recorded in the Reports of the Protector of Slaves in the colonies of British Guiana (Berbice, Demerara-Essequibo), and Trinidad in the early nineteenth-century. Drawing on their near-verbatim testimony, my work analyses enslaved people's medical experiences in both urban and plantation spaces, highlighting Afro- and Afro-Caribbean knowledge systems and the process of knowledge- and community-making through healthcare. In 2026, I joined Edinburgh as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on a project that aims to digitize these unique records: 'Voices in Slavery's Archive':https://hca.ed.ac.uk/research-and-impact/research-at-hca/research-projects/voices-in-slaverys-archive
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