Kerry-Louise Apps

Following a long-term interest in colonial history, my PhD project will focus on colonial and global material culture in the collections of Ham House, a seventeenth-century mansion by the Thames, in collaboration with the OU and National Trust. This work, in particular, will center upon the intersection of colonial objects and investment in colonial enterprises as expressions of status amongst Restoration courtiers. Before the PhD I completed undergraduate and MPhil degrees focused on social, global, and colonial histories of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. My most recent work completed as part of my MPhil at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, focused on the Colonial enterprises of Robert Rich, second Earl of Warwick and early interactions with enslavement from 1616 to 1641. In the years between my undergraduate degree and MPhil, I returned to south London and was a teacher and then head of history in two south London comprehensives. As a teacher, I channeled my passion for social mobility as the first in my family to attend university alongside building more representative history curriculums into a range of activities. I have designed and written copy for a revamped BBC Bitesize guides and was published in BBC History Revealed. I have worked with a range of other institutions to provide resources on modern Irish and early modern colonial histories for students and teachers as well as organizing conferences for teachers led by academic historians. I look forward to bringing my skills learnt in my teaching career to this exciting project.