Dr Kristen Treen awarded AHRC and Leverhulme Grants

Dr Kristen Treen, lecturer at the School of English, received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for her public-facing project, "Histories of Hope?: Museum Redevelopment at Camp Nelson National Monument", and from the Leverhulme Research Project fund for "Remembering Refugees: Black Civil War Memory and Contemporary Commemoration".

Dr Treen's Leverhulme-funded project will focus on the experiences of Black refugees who fled slavery during the Civil War, and sought refuge at federal camps in Kentucky, Maryland, Virginia, and Washington DC, among other states. Over three years from September 2025, her research team will explore the relevance of the term 'refugee' to the experiences of formerly enslaved people across the war-torn states, and the futures they sought to build for themselves. Asking how refugees' mobility, refuge-taking, and acts of settlement shaped alternative commemorative approaches to the war, researchers on the project will uncover how these have been remembered, forgotten, or erased from public memory.

Concentrating on specific refugee camps, including Camp Nelson (Kentucky) and 'Contraband Camp' (Washington, DC), it will enhance academic and public understanding of the country's system of enslavement and Black networks of resistance and aid through extensive archival research, which will be shared through academic and public-facing publications, and innovative uses of exhibitions and digital mapping.

The AHRC-funded project, which will take place from August 2025 to October 2027, connects University of St Andrews researchers with historians from the Camp Nelson National Monument in Nicholasville, Kentucky. Camp Nelson was the United States' third largest recruitment centre for African American troops and a refuge for Black women and children searching for their freedom during the Civil War.

This sustained, Impact-focused collaboration will consider overlooked databases, primary and secondary sources, and archaeological materials to uncover the neglected history of Camp Nelson's refugees from slavery. Through their work with staff and members of the local community, including descendants of Black refugees and troops, the researchers will co-create innovative, community-engaged museum exhibits highlighting the hopes Black refugees placed in Camp Nelson and the challenges they met there, raising questions about the processes involved in commemoration and the creation of historical narratives.