Dr Ryan Walmsley PhD

• PhD History (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Joint Doctorate), University of Kent and Universidade do Porto, 2023
• MA History, Universiteit van Amsterdam, 2018
• BA (Hons) Social and Economic History, University of Liverpool, 2015

Ryan Walmsley’s book, Oceans of Feeling: An Emotional History of Caribbean Migrants in Postwar Britain (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025), examines Caribbean migration to Britain through the lens of the history of emotions. His published work also addresses migrant motivation and emotional experience, and the relationship between emotion and identity in underground, nonlegal Caribbean parties in England, 1950–1987.

He previously held an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship at Swansea University between 2023 and 2025. He completed a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Joint Doctorate in History at the University of Kent and Universidade do Porto in 2023, following an MA in History at Universiteit van Amsterdam (2018) and a BA (Hons) in Social and Economic History at the University of Liverpool (2015).

His current contribution to the Wellcome Trust-funded PDMH project involves archival research across Caribbean case studies.

Undergraduate teaching in modern British history and its colonial and imperial dimensions at the University of Kent and Swansea University, including lectures, seminars, assessment and feedback.

Ryan Walmsley’s current research is undertaken through the Wellcome Trust-funded project Prisons, Drugs and Mental Health: An Interdisciplinary Global Study. His contribution involves archival research across Caribbean case studies, exploring the histories of prisons, drugs and mental health.

His wider research connects the histories of emotions, migration, empire and carceral institutions, with a focus on Britain and the Caribbean. His book, Oceans of Feeling: An Emotional History of Caribbean Migrants in Postwar Britain (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025), examines Caribbean migration through the history of emotions.