Robert Colby is a historian of the Civil War era, with an emphasis on the lived experience of the conflict and on slavery and emancipation.
Research Interests
Robert Colby's current book project explores the survival of the domestic slave trade during the Civil War, using wartime slave commerce to examine the endurance of Confederate nationalism, economic and social life during the war, and the contested onset of African-American freedom. He has published in the Journal of the Civil War Era, Journal of the Early Republic, and Slavery and Abolition, as well as in an edited volume on reconciliation following Civil Wars.
Biography
Robert Colby is the recipient of the Society of American Historians' Allan Nevins Prize, of the Society of Civil War Historians' Anne J. Bailey Prize and Anthony Kaye Memorial Essay Award, and was a finalist for the Southern Historical Association's C. Vann Woodward Award. Before joining the University of Mississippi's History Department in 2022, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for American Studies at Christopher Newport University.
Education
B.A. History, University of Virginia Main Campus (2009)
M.A. History, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (2015)
Ph.D. History, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (2019)