Linsey McMillan

Thesis title: Medicine and Slavery in the British Caribbean, 1780-1820

Biography

Background

I completed my undergraduate degree at the University of Glasgow, spending a year at the University of Sydney. I then moved to the United States, where I gained my Masters degree at the University of New Hampshire. Whilst there I also taught undergraduate students as a Graduate Teaching Assistant, supported by an award from the British Association for American Studies. After completing my MA, I spent three years working in various roles in Technology at the Royal Bank of Scotland, including as a project manager on the Independent Commission on Banking programme (part of the UK government's structural reforms for the promotion of financial security). 

Having returned to academia, I am currently a first year PhD student researching medicine and transatlantic slavery in the British Caribbean and wider Atlantic in the late eighteenth and early nineteeenth centuries. My research is concerned with Scotland's role in slavery, the medicalization of race, and the experiences of enslavement through a medical lens. My work is supported by the AHRC DTP scheme. 

Qualifications

Master of Arts, Distinction-  University of New Hampshire, USA.

- Thesis, "Mastering Magico- Medicine: Slave Health and Culture on New World Slave Plantations"

 

Master of Arts (Hons), First Class- University of Glasgow

- Dissertation, "The Throat Distmper: An Historical Analysis of a Diphtheria Epidemic in New Hampshire and Massachusetts between 1735- 1740".

Responsibilities & affiliations

Member, Phi Alpha Theta (American Honour Society for undergraduate and postgraduate students)

Member, British Association for American Studies

Participant, Edinburgh Centre for Global History

Research summary

History of transatlantic slavery; history of medicine; race and gender history; Caribbean history; global history

Current research interests

My current research is concerned with the role of Scottish surgeons working within the system of transatlantic slavery in the British Caribbean and wider Atlantic world, and with the lived experiences of the enslaved people they treated. It aims to uncover Scotland's medical connections to chattel slavery, and to investigate the individual lives of those marginalised and oppressed by this system of violent subjugation and structural racism.

Past research interests

West African medical and religious history; epidemic disease in eighteenth century New England; American history

Affiliated research centres

2013-2015 Graduate Teaching Assistantship, British Association for American Studies (University of New Hampshire).

2018-2021 AHRC/ SGSAH Doctoral Training Partnership, (University of Edinburgh).

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