Zoe currently holds an AHRC grant (£1.84 million) called The Antislavery Usable Past (2014-19). This project is unearthing, theorising and applying a usable past of antislavery examples and methods as a tool for policy makers and civil society in the movement to end contemporary global slavery. The grant is one of three awards announced by the AHRC under their 'Care for the Future: Thinking Forward through the Past' theme, which aims to generate new understandings of the relationship between the past and the future. The five-year project brings together a team of four professors, three PhD students and two postdoctoral fellows, as well as a number of international partner organisations.
Another current grant is an AHRC-GCRF project (£2 million) called The Antislavery Knowledge Network (2017-21). This is discovering how approaches from the arts and humanities can address contemporary forms of enslavement by adopting a community-engaged, human rights focus that delivers development impacts. The project is one of a group of international "Network Plus" projects funded by the AHRC and led by universities based in the UK. They have been set up to conduct collaborative arts and humanities-based research into some of the world’s most pressing development challenges. The five funded projects bring together a wide range of UK arts and humanities research expertise with researchers and non-academic partners in low and middle income countries.
She recently completed an ESRC grant (£100,000) called Modern Slavery: Meaning and Measurement (2016-18). This was a study and analysis of how contemporary slavery is defined. It brought the perspective and participation of contemporary survivors of slavery into the study through collecting new narratives first-hand.
From 2016-19 she held Research Priority Area Development Funding for a project called "The Freedom Blueprint." This designed innovative new strategies for the contemporary antislavery movement. She previously held a University of Nottingham Discipline Bridging Award (2015-16) for a project called "The Slavery Lens: Interdisciplinary Strategies for Contemporary Abolition." This brought together staff members from multiple departments for a research collaboration to develop an interdisciplinary slavery lens. The project included regional network workshops, impact training, student collaboration, roadshow presentations, a conference and NGO, industry and policy seminars. It established an interdisciplinary team, the value of a slavery lens for multiple actors and disciplines, and innovative strategies for the contemporary antislavery movement.
In 2016 she held an AHRC Connected Communities Grant for a project called "Draw for the Future." This brought together the university's Centre for Research in Race and Rights, the New Art Exchange and Nottingham Black Archive, to create a new community mural. The four-month project transformed an old wall in the heart of Hyson Green into a vibrant and inspiring piece of public art.
Previously she has held a British Academy Rising Star Engagement award (2015-16) that created a base for early career researchers and knowledge exchange partners. The funded activities included public dialogues between academics and activists on social justice topics at the New Art Exchange and a conference at Nottingham Contemporary.
She completed a British Academy-funded project called "Picturing Frederick Douglass" (2013-15), which created a collection of all known Frederick Douglass photographs, for publication as a book by W.W. Norton. This project reclaimed Douglass as a leading pioneer in photography, both as a stately subject and as a prescient theorist who believed in the explosive social power of what was then just an emerging art form. Five years of research uncovered 160 separate photographs of Douglass - many of which have never been publicly seen and were long lost to history. In 2016 she also curated an exhibition about Frederick Douglass - the largest ever held about this figure - at the Boston African American Museum. It was on view until August 2019.
Other past awards and projects include an AHRC Grant for Exhibition Curating; an AHRC bursary for "Policy Impact Skills for Historians"; a British Academy Landmark Conference grant; the Gilder Lehrman Center's Slavery, Abolition, & Resistance Research Fellowship (Yale University); the Beinecke Library's John D. and Rose H. Jackson Visiting Fellowship (Yale University); the Andrew W. Mellon / American Council of Learned Societies Faculty Fellowship; the Modern Languages Association (North-East) Summer Fellowship; the Research School of Humanities Visiting Fellowship (Australian National University); the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History Research Fellowship; a Historical Society of Southern California Research Grant; a Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History Research Grant (Harvard University); and the Kennedy Memorial Scholarship. She held a postdoctoral fellowship at UNC Chapel Hill.
For her scholarship she has won the Helen Choate Bell Dissertation Prize; the Louis Owens Essay Prize; the William Harris Arnold and Gertrude Weld Arnold Prize (twice); the Boston Ruskin Prize; the Helen Choate Bell Essay Prize (twice); the Agnes Cann Prize; and the Anne Jemima Clough Prize. She was a finalist for the Ralph Henry Gabriel Prize and the Lincoln Prize.
Another current grant is an AHRC-GCRF project (£2 million) called The Antislavery Knowledge Network (2017-21). This is discovering how approaches from the arts and humanities can address contemporary forms of enslavement by adopting a community-engaged, human rights focus that delivers development impacts. The project is one of a group of international "Network Plus" projects funded by the AHRC and led by universities based in the UK. They have been set up to conduct collaborative arts and humanities-based research into some of the world’s most pressing development challenges. The five funded projects bring together a wide range of UK arts and humanities research expertise with researchers and non-academic partners in low and middle income countries.
She recently completed an ESRC grant (£100,000) called Modern Slavery: Meaning and Measurement (2016-18). This was a study and analysis of how contemporary slavery is defined. It brought the perspective and participation of contemporary survivors of slavery into the study through collecting new narratives first-hand.
From 2016-19 she held Research Priority Area Development Funding for a project called "The Freedom Blueprint." This designed innovative new strategies for the contemporary antislavery movement. She previously held a University of Nottingham Discipline Bridging Award (2015-16) for a project called "The Slavery Lens: Interdisciplinary Strategies for Contemporary Abolition." This brought together staff members from multiple departments for a research collaboration to develop an interdisciplinary slavery lens. The project included regional network workshops, impact training, student collaboration, roadshow presentations, a conference and NGO, industry and policy seminars. It established an interdisciplinary team, the value of a slavery lens for multiple actors and disciplines, and innovative strategies for the contemporary antislavery movement.
In 2016 she held an AHRC Connected Communities Grant for a project called "Draw for the Future." This brought together the university's Centre for Research in Race and Rights, the New Art Exchange and Nottingham Black Archive, to create a new community mural. The four-month project transformed an old wall in the heart of Hyson Green into a vibrant and inspiring piece of public art.
Previously she has held a British Academy Rising Star Engagement award (2015-16) that created a base for early career researchers and knowledge exchange partners. The funded activities included public dialogues between academics and activists on social justice topics at the New Art Exchange and a conference at Nottingham Contemporary.
She completed a British Academy-funded project called "Picturing Frederick Douglass" (2013-15), which created a collection of all known Frederick Douglass photographs, for publication as a book by W.W. Norton. This project reclaimed Douglass as a leading pioneer in photography, both as a stately subject and as a prescient theorist who believed in the explosive social power of what was then just an emerging art form. Five years of research uncovered 160 separate photographs of Douglass - many of which have never been publicly seen and were long lost to history. In 2016 she also curated an exhibition about Frederick Douglass - the largest ever held about this figure - at the Boston African American Museum. It was on view until August 2019.
Other past awards and projects include an AHRC Grant for Exhibition Curating; an AHRC bursary for "Policy Impact Skills for Historians"; a British Academy Landmark Conference grant; the Gilder Lehrman Center's Slavery, Abolition, & Resistance Research Fellowship (Yale University); the Beinecke Library's John D. and Rose H. Jackson Visiting Fellowship (Yale University); the Andrew W. Mellon / American Council of Learned Societies Faculty Fellowship; the Modern Languages Association (North-East) Summer Fellowship; the Research School of Humanities Visiting Fellowship (Australian National University); the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History Research Fellowship; a Historical Society of Southern California Research Grant; a Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History Research Grant (Harvard University); and the Kennedy Memorial Scholarship. She held a postdoctoral fellowship at UNC Chapel Hill.
For her scholarship she has won the Helen Choate Bell Dissertation Prize; the Louis Owens Essay Prize; the William Harris Arnold and Gertrude Weld Arnold Prize (twice); the Boston Ruskin Prize; the Helen Choate Bell Essay Prize (twice); the Agnes Cann Prize; and the Anne Jemima Clough Prize. She was a finalist for the Ralph Henry Gabriel Prize and the Lincoln Prize.
