Researcher in Focus: Dr Sophie Jones
Posted on: 7 June 2023 by Sophie Jones in 2023 Posts
Our researcher in focus for this month is Dr Sophie Jones, from the Department of History. In this blog, Sophie tells us all about her work exploring the social and cultural development of the North American colonies and how this shaped political identities during the American Revolution.
Listen to Sophie talk about her work and career in our 'researcher in focus' podcast below.
Colonial identities and political allegiances
An historian of the eighteenth-century British Atlantic, and a digital humanities scholar, my research considers the social and cultural development of the North American colonies and how this in turn shaped political identities during the American Revolution. I am particularly interested in the American loyalists – named as such for remaining ‘loyal’ to the British cause. Simply put, my research asks why colonial Americans chose to fight for the British forces (rather than the Americans) and considers the role of their local cultural environments in influencing their decisions.
My doctoral research (University of Liverpool, 2018) explored the development of loyalism in New York and found that there were significant variations of loyalism within a single colony. Local understandings of what it meant to be ‘loyal’, along with the actions that loyalists took (or didn’t take), varied considerably between different contexts. My first monograph, Patterns of Loyalism in Revolutionary New York, based on this research is currently in preparation, but you can read more about this research in my article in the Journal of Early American History. Going forward, I hope to expand my focus geographically to consider how loyalism in urban centres compared to loyalism in more rural and frontier communities.
Libraries, lives and legacies
I joined the University of Liverpool in 2019 as a Postdoctoral Research Associate (PDRA) on the £1m AHRC-funded project, Libraries, Reading Communities and Cultural Formation in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic. Led by Professor Mark Towsey, I work as part of an interdisciplinary team of researchers from across the US, UK, and Australia. This digital humanities project investigates the contribution made by community-founded subscription libraries to social, cultural, and political change in the eighteenth century. The project’s main output is an open access database (due for publication later this year) which combines all known surviving material relating to subscription libraries: including catalogues, membership lists, and borrowing records. Given my expertise in colonial America, I am responsible for all primary research concerning the North American aspects of the project. This includes data entry, completing bibliographical research on library holdings, and conducting prosopographical research on library members.
In January 2020 – just before the pandemic – I was extremely fortunate to visit Western Sydney University, where I received specialist training in advanced Digital Humanities methods from their Digital Humanities Research Group. Thanks to this training, I have been able to play an important role in database design, including gaining invaluable experience in designing the data structures using Heurist (an Open Source online database builder designed for Humanities research). As a PDRA, I also work closely with our North American partners to develop exciting pathways to impact and public engagement through talks, blogs, and commissioned articles for their in-house publications.
Tangents and squiggly careers
Before returning to the University of Liverpool in 2019, I previously worked as a PDRA at Keele University on Dr Siobhan Talbott’s AHRC-funded project, ‘Business News in the Atlantic World’. This project focuses on the ways in which merchants in the early-modern Atlantic created, disseminated, and used vital business information. Our co-edited collection is due for publication later this year, but our co-authored article – Sole Traders? – which looks at the (often obscured) roles of women and children in shaping mercantile activities is available now.
However, my career trajectory is best described as ‘Squiggly’. I am a first-generation university graduate, and before I returned to full-time study in 2013 (first, to complete my MA, then my PhD), I pursued a career in marketing and was employed in the financial services industry. Because of this, I’ve acquired a broad range of skills and interests along the way – something which the University’s ground-breaking Prosper programme has helped me to untangle. I’ve been able to put some of the skills that I developed in industry to good use, such as serving my Postdoc community as a member of the Research Staff Association and providing ECR representation on several University and national committees. As a PhD student, I drew upon these skills to collaborate with Bluecoat Arts Centre to explore the connections between philanthropy and slavery in eighteenth-century Liverpool.
Perhaps because of my varied background, I have developed an eclectic mix of research interests and published on a broad range of topics. My work intersects loyalist studies, eighteenth-century studies, early American history, Atlantic studies, colonial history, library history, book history, the history of emotions, military history, and the history of slavery. This summer marks 10 years since I left industry because I was curious about an idea. As I move into the next stage of my career, I hope that I continue to remain so.
Learn more about Sophie on her staff page.
Keywords: Researcher in Focus.