Dr  Laurence Brown - Research

Specific research interests:

Laurence Brown is Lecturer in Migration History. His main research interests are immigration in modern Britain and France, Caribbean history, and Historical GIS. 

Current research projects:

Immigration in Britain and France

"Mapping Migrant Cultures in Manchester 1880-2000" was funded by a large grant from the AHRC's Diasporas, Migrations and Identities Programme. The project employs digital mapping to analyze the internal heterogeneity of the Caribbean and Jewish diasporas, how they interacted with native and other immigrant groups, and how diasporic contact zones were shaped by industrial and post-industrial society. Using GIS to connect census data, oral testimonies, government archives and other published sources.

Caribbean History

"A Global History of Caribbean Migration" brings together research on historical and contemporary population movements to, within and from the Caribbean. The first volume of the project for the period 1500-1900 has been completed, using GIS to map the interactions between European, African and Asian migrations.

I have also been engaged with several public history projects on the connections between Caribbean slavery and Europe. For English Heritage I produced two reports looking at the impact Atlantic slavery had on two of their properties, Marble Hill House in Richmond and Northington Grange in Hampshire. I am also currently co-directing with Dr Curtis Jacobs of the University of the West Indies to digitize the endangered archives of Grenada which is funded by the British Library.