Mia Edwards
Research Overview
My doctoral thesis is entitled, 'Masculinity, Physicality and Disability: Shifting Experiences and Ideologies within the Antebellum South, 1800-1861' and it is supervised by Professors Tim Lockley and Sergio Lussana (Nottingham Trent). I am funded by the AHRC Midlands4Cities Doctoral Training Partnership. My research explores the intersections between masculinity, physical health and ability, as well as disability for enslaved men in the U.S. South. In particular, my research discusses how disability, from birth, sickness, injury or old age, may have impacted an enslaved man's sense of self, as well as their position within contexts such as labour roles and the enslaved community. This work is framed within the wider context of nineteenth century abolitionist and white Southern societal beliefs about an enslaved man's ability to truly 'be a man.' This work also discusses physicality within the context of Antebellum medical research and wider Southern social thought which often characterised black men as 'brutish' and very physically strong in comparison to white men.
Presentations
‘“Why do slaves dread so bad to go to the South?”: The Environment, Physical Decline, and Emotion within the 19th-century U.S. South’| Emotions at the Border / Limits | UNAM, Mexico City | October 2025
‘Emotion and Environmental Impacts upon the Body in the Nineteenth-Century U.S. South’ | Being Human Conference | University of Warwick | February 2025
‘Fear and the Environment within the Nineteenth-Century U.S. South’ | Fear Studies in an Age of Fear | University of Warwick | January 2025
‘Identity, Physical Disability, and Labour within the Plantation South, 1800-1861’ | British American Nineteenth Century Historians | October 2024
‘New Directions in Disability History: A Lightning Round from the Disability History Association’ | Organisation of American Histories Conference | April 2024
'Community, Masculinity, and Physical Disability: Plantation Labour and Emotion, 1800-1861' | Unsettling Certainties: Conference for the Society of the History of Emotions | University of Adelaide | November 2023
'Kentucky Historical Society Fellows Talk' | Kentucky Historical Society | November 2023
'Representations of Masculinity, Physicality, and Physical Disability within Abolitionist Texts and Materials, 1800-1863' | Disability in the Vast Early Americas | University of Notre Dame | October 2023
'Physical Disability, Physicality, and Masculinity within the Plantation Labour System, 1800-1861' | Histories of Disability and Emotion Conference | Leuven Centre for Health Humanities | June 2023
'Paternalism, Masculinity and Pan-Indianism within the Native American Boarding School context, 1897-1970' | British Conference for Undergraduate Research | Spring 2021 (rescheduled from 2020)
'Paternalism, Masculinity and Identity within the Carlisle Indian Industrial School' at Margins to Centre? History Conference' | The University of York | Spring 2020
Poster: Paternalism and the Native American Boarding School Experience | Sheffield Undergraduate Research Conference | The University of Sheffield | Spring 2020
Academic Awards and Funding
Archie K. Davis Fellowship | North Caroliniana Society | 2023
Kentucky Historical Society Fellowship | Kentucky Historical Society | 2023
Arts and Humanities Doctoral Training Partnership | M4C | 2022-2026
Graduate Student Award | Western Historical Association | 2021
Graduate Student Workshop Award | Western Historical Association | 2021
Bryan Marsden History Prize | The University of Sheffield | 2020
Academic Profile
History PhD | University of Warwick | 2022-2026
Atlantic History and Politics M.A. | University of Missouri – Columbia | GPA: 4.0
History B.A. | The University of Sheffield | Degree Classification: First Class