Dr Kellie Moss

After graduating in Modern History at De Montfort University (2012) and completing an MA in History at the University of Leicester (2013) I was awarded a 4-year Graduate Teaching Assistantship with Leicester’s School of History in 2013. My PhD research centered on the global integration of forced labourers to Western Australia from 1829-1868 with a particular focus on the entanglements between indentured European servants apprenticed juvenile emigrants convict labourers and Indigenous Australians. I completed my doctoral research as part of the ERC funded project The Carceral Archipelago: Transnational Circulations in Global Perspective 1415-1960 (2013-18) led by Professor Clare Anderson.

In January 2018 I took on the role of Research Associate at the University of Leicester on a British Academy GCRF project in collaboration with the University of Guyana: History and Security Sector Reform: Crime and Punishment in British Colonial Guyana 1814-1966 (2018-19). More recently I worked as a Research Associate on the multi-disciplinary ESRC GCRF funded project MNS disorders in Guyana’s jails 1825 to the present day (2019-2022). As a Research Associate at the Leicester Institute of Advanced Studies (LIAS) I currently work with academic stakeholders across the university to pioneer and manage a diverse portfolio of research activities, commissioned and/or supported by the institute.

My doctoral research (2013-2018) examined the global mobilities and integration of a range of coerced labourers in nineteenth century Western Australia (1829-1868) bringing global and local history into dialogue. It provided a framework for understanding the functioning of and entanglement between different systems of coerced labour extraction and workers’ experiences.

As a British Academy Research Associate (2018-19) I surveyed correspondence at the National Archives of Guyana and the UK to analyse key features of imprisonment during the British colonial period. I connected these to the challenges faced by the prison sector since Guyana’s independence in 1966. As a ESRC GCRF Research Associate (2019-2022) I analysed a range of archives to trace mental neurological and substance abuse disorders in prisons in Guyana from 1825 to the present day. I have also been PI on two virtual reality prison projects (ESRC IAA). The first (2019) created a 3D interactive model of nineteenth century Mazaruni prison and the second (2020) created a Covid-19 staff training and recording App for the same site (History, Respiratory Sciences and Engineering).

More recently I have been working alongside the GPS and academic staff in Criminology (University of Leicester) on a Wellcome Trust ISSF project to improve the health and wellbeing of prison officers in Guyana (2022-2023), as well as the Faculty of Law at the University of the West Indies (ESRC IAA) on a project aimed at increasing awareness of the ongoing importance and reproduction of colonial-era patterns in sentencing since Caribbean Independence (2022-2023).

Journal Articles:

D. Kerrigan, K. Warren, K. Moss, M. Ifill, T. Ayres, C. Anderson, ‘The Biopolitics of Colonial Carcerality: Colonialism and its afterlife in Guyana’, Carceral Worlds, ed. H. Stuit, J. Turner and J. Weegels (Pending publication).

Moss, K, Adams, E. Toner, D. ‘Immigration, Intoxication, Insanity, and Incarceration’, Slavery and Abolition, (In press Dec. 2022).

Anderson, C. Moss, K. Joseph Jackson, S. ‘Prison Commissions and the Criminal Justice System: Empire and its legacies in British Guiana/Guyana’, Slavery and Abolition, (In press, Dec. 2022).

Warren, K. Moss, K., Kerrigan, D., Ayres, T., Anderson, A., Cameron, Q., Confronting Silences Haunting Guyana’s Juvenile Justice System, Caribbean Journal of Criminology, Vol 3:1 (2021), ISSN: 0799-3897, pp. 10-39.

Moss, K., The Swan River Experiment: Coerced Labour in Western Australia 1829-1868, Studies in Western Australian History, Vol 34, (2020), ISSN: 0314-7525, pp. 23-39. 

Anderson, C. Ifill, M., Adams, E., Moss, K., Guyana's Prisons: Colonial Histories of Post Colonial Challenges, The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice, Vol 59, No 3, (2020), ISSN: 2059-1098, pp. 335-34. 

Book Chapter:

Anderson, C. Crockett, C., De Vito, C., Miyamoto, T., Moss, K., Roscoe, K. Locating Penal Transportation: Punishment, Space and Place. In: D. Moran and K. Morin. eds. Historical Geographies of Prisons: Unlocking the Usable Carceral Past. Abingdon Routledge, (2016), pp.147-67. 

Working Papers:

Moss, K., Toner, D., History of Substance Use and Control in British Guiana, Leicester Institute for Advanced Studies Working Paper Series, Vol 4, (2021), ISSN:  2516-4783. 

Anderson, C., Moss, K., Adams, E., Insanity and Imprisonment in British Guiana, 1814-1966, Leicester Institute for Advanced Studies Working Paper Series, Vol 4, (2021), ISSN:  2516-4783.

Book Reviews:

Paton, D., The Cultural Politics of Obeah: Religion, colonialism, and modernity in the Caribbean world (Cambridge University Press, 2015) in Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, Vol 19, No. 2 (2018).

Lindsey, K., The Convicts Daughter: The scandal that shocked the colony (Allen & Unwin, 2016) in Journal of Australian Historical Studies, Vol. 48, No. 2 (2017).

Selected Digital Publications:

Anderson, C. Moss, K., Epidemics and pandemics In British Guianas Jails in the 19th and 20th centuries (2020) https://mnsguyana.le.ac.uk/category/spanish-flu-1918-19/

Moss, K., History of Substance Use and Control in Guiana (2020) https://mnsguyana.le.ac.uk/2020/03/30/history-of-substance-abuse-and-control-in-guyana/

Moss, K., A System of Reintegration and Control: The Dual Functionality of Regional Convict Depots in Western Australia (2017) https://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/carchipelago/2017/03/20/

As a Graduate Teaching Assistant I designed and taught the module HS1100: Free colony to Penal Settlement: Settlers Aborigines and Missionaries in Western Australia 1829-1849 since 2014. The module traces the history of Western Australia from its origins as a free colony in 1829 to its transformation into a penal settlement in 1849. I have also taught on a number of undergraduate modules including HS1002: Shock of the Modern HS1016: Europe 1861-1991: Emancipation and Subjugation HS1011: Making of the Modern World and HS1010: Europe Reshaped. MA teaching includes HS7010 Core Module Historical Research Historical Writing and HS7310 Global History: Comparative and Connective Approaches.

I was awarded the status of Association Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in May 2017.