Brendon G. Floyd, Ph.D.

I’m a historian of the United States, Ireland, the Atlantic world, empire, and revolution. I completed my Ph.D. in History at the University of Missouri, where I wrote my dissertation, On Strange Tides: The United Irishmen, Conscription, and Liminal Spaces in the Revolutionary Atlantic, 1796-1805. My research follows United Irishmen and other Irish political prisoners, sailors, and soldiers as they were conscripted, transported, and scattered across the British Empire in the era of the 1798 Irish Rebellion, asking how forced mobility and “in-between” spaces—prison hulks, barracks, dockyards, ship decks—shaped radical politics in the Age of Revolution and helped turn the United Irish movement into a international one. On Strange Tides reveals how Britain’s bid to crush Irish rebellion through conscription turned the Atlantic into a highway for revolutionary ideas and actions. More broadly, I work at the intersection of the Age of Revolution, Atlantic history, American history, early modern Irish history, and maritime history with a particular interest in the human experience of state oppression and the subversion of state authority. I am also interested in the history of piracy and its relationship to the state.

I am also an experienced teacher and public historian. Before and during graduate school, I taught history at the middle, secondary, and college levels, developed digital humanities projects, and designed outreach and curriculum for archives and historical societies. Whether in the classroom, the archive, or online, I’m interested in making the complexities of the past—especially the messy, contested worlds of empire and revolution—accessible, engaging, and usable for a wide range of audiences.

Contact: bgfloyd@missouri.edu