Dr Liberty Paterson

About

Liberty researches histories and ongoing legacies of Atlantic slavery, primarily in Britain and the Caribbean.

Research activity

Coming from an art history background, Liberty became interested in how a selective national memory of slavery developed in Britain from the mid-nineteenth century. This idea was central to her PhD at Birkbeck in partnership with London’s National Portrait Gallery, which examined the early history of the Gallery by both remembering its legacies derived from the enslavement of African people and understanding its role in public processes of forgetting slavery.

Public history is key to Liberty’s practice. She co-curated Slavery & the Bank at the Bank of England Museum (2022-24) and curated collection galleries focusing on British colonialism and enslavement for the 2023 redisplay of the National Portrait Gallery. Liberty was a Research Assistant for Lucky Valley: Edward Long and the History of Racial Capitalism (2024) by Professor Catherine Hall. In 2025 she was commissioned to carry out a pilot audit of public histories of slavery across the UK for The University of Sussex. Liberty’s focus on cultural legacies and public history followed a decade spent working in art museums and auction houses prior to her PhD. She has also worked as an Associate Lecturer in History of Art at Birkbeck, University of London and held a short-term fellowship at The Huntington Library in San Marino, California.

Liberty is currently researching the British trade in enslaved people across the Atlantic world as part of PASSAGE (Partnership for Transatlantic Slavery Scholarship, Archiving and Global Exchange) funded by Lloyd’s Register Foundation.