Dr. Jessica Moody
Principal Investigator, Senior Lecturer in Public History, University of Bristol
Leading Work Package 3: Plants, Gardens and the Public Memory of Enslavement. Mapping the public memory of plants, gardens, green heritage spaces and transatlantic enslavement around the Atlantic World.
Jessica’s research considers collective memory, public history, and heritage, especially in relation to difficult and dissonant pasts, histories of enslavement, empire and colonialism, as well as creative forms of memorialisation and counter-memorialisation and the co-production of memory work.
Her first monograph, The Persistence of Memory: Remembering slavery in Liverpool, ‘slaving capital of the world’, (available open access, 2020) analyses how transatlantic enslavement has been ‘remembered’ in Liverpool, the largest slave-trading port city in Europe. The book maps this public memory across over 200 years, from the end of the eighteenth century when the city was at the height of its involvement, to the 21st century when Liverpool had more permanent forms of public history and memorialisation of transatlantic enslavement than any other British city.
Between 2021 and 2023, she was Co-I on the UKRI funded Citizen Science Project ‘Citizens Researching Together: Reparative Justice through Collaborative Research’ and co-led the strand ‘Decolonising Memory: digital bodies in movement’ with Cleo Lake and Kwesi Johnson. This project co-produced an augmented reality mobile phone app and new memorial folk dance. In 2024-2025 Cleo and Jessica are leading a new phase of this project ‘Decolonising Memory through Music’, co-creating an original piece of music to accompany the dance, funded by Research England through a Participatory Research Fund award. www.decolonisingmemory.co.uk.
She is a member of the International Slavery Museum’s Research Advisory Board.
research-information.bris.ac.uk/…/jessica-moody
Dr. Zakiya McKenzie
Senior Research Associate, Writer and cultural historian
Leading Work Package 1: Creative (Public) Histories of Plants and Gardens (March 2025-March 2028). This work package aims to develop innovative methodologies through a series of creative workshops to a) explore different kinds of knowledge around plants and enslavement and b) feed into designing a public history praxis of care. As part of her role, Dr McKenzie is undertaking a 0.4 (2 days per week) secondment to INTO to co-ordinate the RISE network.
Zakiya has been writer-in-residence for Forestry England and artist-in-residence at Studio Voltaire in London. Her 2021 Rough Trade Books historical fiction pamphlet Testimonies on the History of Jamaica Vol. 1 explores the natural and social history of Jamaica in 1655 – the year Britain took the colony of Jamaica from Spain.
Dr. McKenzie was the 2023 winner of the Olivette Otele Prize in Black British Studies convened by the Institute of Historical Research. Her paper ‘The Making of the Empire Windrush as a cultural motif’ challenged the contemporary idea of the Empire Windrush as a vessel of hope and dreams for post-war Caribbean people in Britain. She holds a PhD in English from the University of Exeter on the history of Black British newsprint in December 2023.
Dr Elena Romero-Passerin
Senior Research Associate in Environmental Histories of Enslavement
Leading Work Package 2: Plants as counter-memory of enslavement (October 2025-October 2028). This work package involves researching historical and commemorative connections between plants and histories of enslavement, especially as these relate to partner sites. As part of her role Elena has a 2-day per week secondment to the National Trust supporting the research of curatorial and gardens teams.
Elena is a historian of science, knowledge, and plants, specialising in the 18th and 19th centuries, the history of European botanic gardens, and the circulation of plant-knowledge between Europeans and Local peoples in colonial contexts.
Her particular interest is non-scholar and non-elite populations’ knowledge systems and their interactions with the realm of “science”, including the exploitation and appropriation of Indigenous knowledge in colonial contexts, and the contributions of manual labourers to the development of plant knowledge.
Her commitment to disseminating research through public engagement has resulted in posters, talks, social media and boardgames.
Elena trained at the Sorbonne, Paris and University of St Andrews, has worked for the universities of St Andrews and Exeter, and was a postdoctoral researcher for the Royal Horticultural Society.
Jess Akerman
Research Project Manager
Jess has worked across the creative industries, producing programmes, events and communications for charities, Higher Education and brand consultancies. She specialises in art history, artist development, and visual arts engagement.
Alongside her work as an administrator, Jess is an artist. She has received funding from Arts Council England, Gane, Trust and a-n; commissions include the national 14-18 Now artwork ‘Processions’ in 2018; residencies include TheCoLAB Body and Place residency 2024, Metal Time & Space residency and Kent Cultural Baton Hoo Retreat. She has exhibited in the UK and Ireland.