Rebecca Orr

Rebecca’s research looks at how postcolonial migration resulted in the emergence of new types of professional work and workplace in post-war Britain and its former colonies. Her doctoral thesis explored the constitutive role played by ‘European’ migrants of decolonisation in three sectors on the ascent—private security companies, universities and charitable organisations—to understand the social and economic consequences of decolonisation in Europe. As a research fellow at King’s, she is developing a project on postcolonial families in twentieth-century Britain, investigating intergenerational memory, race and belonging. At the centre of her research is an attempt to show how the arrival of postcolonial migrants reshaped not only citizenship legislation but also the organisation of work, political life and cultural production across Europe.

Rebecca received a BA in History from the University of Cambridge and an MA in Modern History from the University of Warwick. She worked as a research assistant for the Global History of Capitalism project at the University of Oxford before completing her PhD in History at the European University Institute.