CONTACT INFORMATION:

Email: jessica.moody@bristol.ac.uk

RESEARCH

I am a historian of public memory with research interests in the public memory of transatlantic enslavement, empire and colonialism, plants, gardens and 'green heritage' spaces as sites of memory and places of potential public history. I am also interested in creative forms of memorialisation and counter-memorialisation and the co-production of memory work. My first monograph, The Persistence of Memory: Remembering slavery in Liverpool, 'slaving capital of the world',  analysed how transatlantic slavery has been 'remembered' in Liverpool, the largest slave-trading port city in Europe (Liverpool University Press, in hardback, paperback and open access https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/books/isbn/9781789622577/). In this book, I mapped the ways in which this difficult past had (or had not) been addressed and engaged with in public discourse across a longue duree, from the end of the eighteenth century, up to the present day, and therby from 'history' to 'memory'. 

I joined the University of Bristol in September 2017. I have previously worked for the Universities of Portsmouth (Lecturer in Modern History and Heritage, 2014-2017) and York (Research Associate with the Institute for the Public Understanding of the Past Spring 2014-Autumn 2014). I completed my PhD (The memory of slavery in Liverpool in Public Discourse form the Nineteenth Century to the Present Day) at the University of York in April 2014 (supervised by Dr Geoff Cubitt). I also have a Master's degree in Cultural Heritage Management (University of York, course director Prof Laurajane Smith) and undertook my BA (Archaeology and English) at the University of Liverpool. I have also previously worked for National Museums Liverpool and worked with The Chocolate Story (York), English Heritage, Merchant Adventurer's Hall (York), Wiltshire Heritage Museum (Devizes) and Chester Amphitheatre.

Between 2021 and 2023 I was a Co-I on the UKRI funded Citizen Science Project 'Citizens Researching Together: Reparative Justice through Collaborative Research' and co-led the strand 'Decolonising Memory: Digital bodies in movement' with Cleo Lake and Kwesi Johnson www.decolonisingmemory.co.uk . In 2024-25, Lake and I are leading a Participatory Research project developing original music to accompany the dance (Research England funded). 

I am currently a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow (October 2024-28) leading the fellowship Plants, Enslavement and Public History: Re-imagining green spaces as places of heritage and healing. 

Teaching

I am on research leave and not currently teaching.

In 2020-21 I introduced the University of Bristol's first Practice-Based Dissertation in History where students undertake a public history project (you can read about student experiences of this HERE). In 2021-22 I set up a new Bristol Futures unit (open to all students across the university) called Decolonise the Future! as an introduction to decolonial theory and practice in different disciplines and subject areas. 

Research Supervision:

I would be happy to supervise postgraduates on subjects relating to public history/heritage/collective memory research.