Dr Wendy Asquith PhD

Personal Statement

Dr Wendy Asquith is a specialist in postcolonial politics, the politics of development and creative methods for co-production with an interest in recovering the agency of marginalised groups within unequal global systems through research, collaborative work and influencing policy. Wendy joined the Politics department in 2021 and has led impact-focussed and policy-oriented elements of innovative research grants designed to address major global challenges.

As a Research Fellow with the Modern Slavery and Human Rights Policy and Evidence Centre (2022 - 2023) Wendy led the University of Liverpool’s work strand on modern slavery and international development. Working with a multi-sectoral group of colleagues – including experts with lived experience – she led research commissioned by the UK government’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). She was lead co-author on the major research report arising from this project entitled A Review of Promising Practices in the Engagement of People with Lived Experience to Address Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking (2022), which has directly informed government policy with global reach.

Previous to this, Wendy was a Postdoctoral Researcher with The Antislavery Knowledge Network (AKN) a major GCRF-funded project that aimed to inform more effective policy interventions in response to UN Sustainable Development Goal 8.7. Working with a network of partners across sub-Saharan Africa (Ghana, DRC, Niger, Nigeria, Mali, Uganda, Sierra Leone and Kenya), the project explored ways to address extreme practices of exploitation – including forms of modern slavery and human trafficking - through support of creative and community-led approaches.

Wendy is currently completing a book-length monograph entitled Exhibiting Haiti: The Art of Postcolonial Politics which explores the role Haiti has played in pioneering the efforts of postcolonial nation-states to negotiate international relations through cultural diplomacy. She was also the recipient of a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship (2016-2020) based at the University of Nottingham where she undertook a project entitled The Spectacle of Universal Human Rights: A Century of Intergovernmental Display at World's Fairs. Through deep-archival research she examined the visions of humanitarianism and development that the UN (and its predecessor, the League of Nations) have shaped and promoted over the last century.