Visualizing Difference: Amelia Newsham and the Art of Race-Making

This lecture begins with a family that, according to the racial logic emerging in late-eighteenth-century Britain, should not have existed: Amelia Newsham, a white-skinned woman of African descent; her white English husband; and their brown-skinned children. Encountered at fairs and market towns by spectators, abolitionists, and scientific observers, including the surgeon John Hunter, their presence unsettled the increasingly rigid assumptions forming around skin colour, heredity, and human difference.

What might such a family mean in a moment when “skin, hair, and bone” were coming to bear the weight of new scientific and political claims? Although Amelia’s encounters with Hunter are not documented, the portrait of her family commissioned by him and painted by Johan Zoffany is revealing. Focusing on Amelia’s life and the painting, this talk shows how racial knowledge was fashioned not only through enlightenment theories of difference, and systems of slavery and colonialism, but also through the ordinary and intimate lives of marginalized individuals in England.

is Brittenden Fellow and Associate Professor in Black and Modern British History at the Queen's College, University of Oxford. She is a social-cultural historian, whose work focuses on women of African ancestry in the Anglo-Caribbean and Britain.

Ono-George's current major project is a forthcoming book titled The Many Lives of Amelia Newsham (Viking), which focuses on the intimate history of race-making in late eighteenth century Britain told through the life of one woman.

Room TL325
Jocelyn Bell Burnell Wing
Learning and Teaching Building
49 Richmond Street
Glasgow, G1 1XU

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Image Credit
© National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.

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Travel Bursaries for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Researchers, Educators, and Community Organisers

To support wider participation in the event, the University of Strathclyde, with support from the Anti-Racism Observatory for Scotland and the Wellcome Trust, is offering a small number of travel bursaries for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic researchers, educators, and community organisers. These bursaries are intended to help widen access to the event and ensure that colleagues and partners from beyond the university sector are part of the conversation. Please complete the application form by Tuesday, 1 September 2026, at noon.

For further information about these bursaries, please contact Dr Jesús Sanjurjo: [email protected]

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