Rate My Professor Nicholas Radburn

Dr. Nicholas Radburn is Senior Lecturer in the History of the Atlantic World 1500-1800 in the School of Global Affairs at Lancaster University. He earned his PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 2016, an MA from Johns Hopkins University in 2012, an MA with Distinction from Victoria University of Wellington in 2009, and a BA (Hons) in History from Victoria University of Wellington in 2007. Prior to his current role, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Southern California’s Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute from 2016 to 2017 and joined Lancaster University as Lecturer in 2017, promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2022.

Radburn’s research focuses on the history of the Atlantic World, with particular emphasis on the transatlantic slave trade, plantation slavery, cross-cultural trade, and economic history. He is investigating the global trade in firearms to indigenous peoples, the adoption of gunpowder technology, enslavement, and environmental change on the peripheries of Britain’s empire. His acclaimed monograph, Traders in Men: Merchants and the Transformation of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (Yale University Press, 2023), won the 2024 James A. Rawley Prize in Atlantic History and was a finalist for the Wolfson History Prize, Hagley Prize, Paul Lovejoy Prize, and Slaveryarchive book prize. He has published articles in leading journals such as the William and Mary Quarterly, Past & Present, and the Journal of Economic History; two received best article awards: the Richard L. Morton Award (2016) and Wayne S. Rasmussen Award (2019). Radburn is co-editor of the AHRC- and NEH-funded Slave Voyages project, a digital memorial to the 12.5 million Africans enslaved in the transatlantic slave trade. As principal investigator, he leads the AHRC/NEH “Towards a Digital Archive of the Atlantic Slave Trades” and Economic History Society’s “British Gunpowder Industry and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade”; he is co-investigator on the AHRC “Legacies of the British Slave Trade.” His contributions include digital models of French slave ships and public engagement through media and exhibitions, illuminating the structures and impacts of the slave trade.