Ryan Hanley

Ryan Hanley is a British professor of history at the University of Exeter. He specialises in race and slavery in modern Britain, with a focus on the perspectives of people of African descent.

He is notable for being one of only two historians to have been awarded both the Alexander Prize and the Whitfield Book Prize from the Royal Historical Society. In 2023, Hanley was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize "for his work on Black British history, history and cultures of British anti-slavery, and class and ‘race’ in Britain."

Education and academic positions Hanley earned his doctorate in history from Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation at the University of Hull. After obtaining his degree, he worked at the University of Oxford, UCL, and the University of Bristol before taking up a full-time lecturing position at the University of Exeter. He has also had visiting fellowships at Queen Mary University, London and at the Huntington Library in California. He serves as a member of the executive committee for the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. The article was deemed significant enough to feature in the Economic History Review's List of publications on the economic and social history of Great Britain and Ireland published in 2016.

Hanley continued this approach by conducting the first full-length historical study of pre-abolition Black British writing in his 2019 Whitfield Prize-winning book Beyond Slavery and Abolition: Black British Writing, c. 1770–1830. In each of the eight chapters, Hanley provides a case study on a different Black British writer, and categorises them into three sections. Firstly, 'Black Celebrities', containing Ignatius Sancho, Olaudah Equiano/Gustavus Vassa, and Mary Prince. Next, the 'Black Evangelicals', Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, Boston King, and John Jea. Ending with the 'Black Radicals', Ottobah Cugoano and Robert Wedderburn. In his review of the work, Matthew Wyman-McCarthy emphasises the significance of Hanley's choice to frame Black British writers within their authorial 'networks'. He says the book makes strides for scholars who can now holistically approach these individuals as intellectuals, rather than simply abolitionists. He also says that the individual case studies conducted by Hanley deserve their place on undergraduate syllabi.

Publications

Books

Journal articles

Chapters

Prizes