The Baring Archive is pleased to announce that Arina Zarei has begun her PhD scholarship at the University of Leeds focussing on the role of slavery in the British financial sector. Her research focus will be on the involvement of the City of London, and particularly Baring Brothers, with slavery in the 18th and early part of the 19th centuries.
The Baring Archive will be the primary source for the project which will aim to map the extent of the involvement of Baring Brothers with the slave economy and the contribution this involvement made to the business of Baring Brothers.
The scholarship is hosted at the School of History at the University of Leeds and Arina will be supervised by a team led by Professor Manuel Barcia (Chair of Global History) and co-supervised by Dr Danielle Terrazas Williams (Associate Professor in History of the Global South). Funding for the scholarship is being provided jointly by Baring Asset Management Limited and ING Bank NV, London branch and follows the recommendations made by the Baring Archive Advisory Group to the Trustees of The Baring Archive in 2021.
The Baring Archive Advisory Group was established in July 2020 by the Trustees of the Baring Archive, to consider, and advise the Trustees on, the records in the Archive that relate to financial activities associated with slavery.