The work of Erin Neill (MA in Public History 2024-25) has been showcased by the European Network of Masters in Public History (EUMAPH). EUMAPH brings together students and alumni from Public History Masters programmes across Europe to encourage collaboration, share knowledge, and create opportunities for engagement across national and academic borders.

Erin writes about the 30-day internship she carried out with Queen’s University’s MA in Public History.  She chose to work on the Free People of Color in Natchez project run by QUB historian, Dr Nik Ribianszky, which explores the complicated and under-researched history of the multifaceted relationship between African-descended peoples and Irish immigrants in north America. It focuses on Natchez, Mississippi, which held the second-largest slave market in the nineteenth century as well as a vibrant Irish immigrant community, and aims to create a website, database, and interactive maps that will enable scholars and the public to visualize Natchez’s Black and Irish past spatially and chronologically, illustrated with richly detailed life histories.

Read Erin’s showcase report here