WATCH – Slavery, the Industrial Revolution, and Public History Presentation

By Megan Bridgeland and Katie Vidal Belshaw

In May 2024, Global Threads were delighted to be invited to join the Centre for Empire and Postcolonial Studies at The Open University for an all-day workshop on ‘Slavery, the Industrial Revolution, and Public History’ alongside a stellar roster of excellent presenters and projects.

You can watch above to hear Megan Bridgeland share her research on discovering documented connections from specific cotton plantations in the United States supplying Manchester’s manufacturers, her work platforming and exploring material culture as a method of expression and resistance for enslaved women, and describe the Global Threads team’s engagement work introducing visitors to themes and findings from our project.

Global Threads co-lead Katie Vidal Belshaw gives a wider introduction to the project, and its aims of generating relatable, human narratives that help to make complex themes relatable, the practice of working collectively with a team of diverse specialisms, interests, and backgrounds to cover a broad range of connections, and the many ways in which the Science and Industry Museum have embedded findings and outputs from Global Threads into permanent museum interpretation.

You can also view online the day’s other sessions, with a presentations from:

Maxine Berg and Pat Hudson on their volume Slavery, Capitalism, and the Industrial Revolution.

Lisa Robinson and Suzanne Shaw from the Global Cotton Connections project.

Abdul Mohamud and Robin Whitburn of Justice to History on “Principles and planning for Teaching about a challenging past”.

Ashley Jones, Rohan Shah, and Matthew Stallard of UCL’s Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery on their educational resource project Black Industrial Revolution.