Â鶹APP

I am a historian of crime and punishment in the United States and the British Empire in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

I received my PhD in 2004 from the University of Nottingham for a dissertation on slavery and criminal law in the American South.  I was appointed the same year as New Directions Lecturer at the University of Portsmouth and I joined the University of Leicester in 2007.

As a researcher, my early work focused on the United States and especially histories of criminal justice and law enforcement in African American history from slavery to the present day.  More recently I have worked on histories of the death penalty in the twentieth century Caribbean and British Empire supported by funding from the British Academy.  I have published widely on these topics, including three books and three collections of essays.

I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and teach History and Politics students on a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate modules, many of which are inspired by my research.

My research focuses on histories of crime, punishment, law, rights and justice in the United States and the British Empire.  My most recent work concerns death penalty policies and practices in Britain and British colonies.  I have a book, Reluctant Abolitionists: Britain and the End of the Colonial Death Penalty, forthcoming with Cambridge University Press, and have published articles on executions, reprieves, death penalty law and death row in Jamaica.  In 2016, I was awarded the Surrency Prize by the American Society for Legal History for my article ‘Murder Appeals, Delayed Executions, and the Origins of Jamaican Death Penalty Jurisprudence.’

I have published extensively on histories of crime, slavery and race in the United States.  My first book, Slavery on Trial, looked at race, policing and punishment in the nineteenth century American South.  My second book, Crime and Punishment in African American History, traced the Black experience of US law enforcement and criminal justice from the eighteenth century to the early twenty-first century.  I have also published articles and chapters covering topics from nineteenth century court cases about racial identity to slave policing in Brazil and parole in 1920s New York.  Alongside these works, I have published three co-edited books: Reconstruction: People and Places; Transnational Penal Cultures: New Perspectives on Discipline, Punishment and Desistance and The Routledge History of Crime in America.

New Research

I am currently working on two new research projects.  The first is a study of the military death penalty and abolition movements in the second half of the twentieth century.  It considers the relationship between military law and debates about death penalty abolition in Britain.  The second is a study of British extradition policy since 1900 that analyses extradition cases in colonial, European and global contexts.

Books

Campbell, J. M. (forthcoming 2026) Reluctant Abolitionists: Britain and the End of the Colonial Death Penalty (Cambridge University Press).

Campbell, J. M. and Miller, V., eds (2024) The Routledge History of Crime in America (Routledge). ISBN10: 9781032291253

Campbell, J.M. and Miller V., eds. (2014) Transnational Penal Cultures: New Perspectives on Discipline, Punishment and Desistance (Routledge). ISBN10: 0415741319 ISBN13: 978-0415741316

Campbell J.M. (2012) Crime and Punishment in African American History (Palgrave). ISBN13: 9780230273801

Campbell J.M. and Fraser, R., eds. (2008) Reconstruction: People and Perspectives (ABC-Clio). ISBN13: 978-1-59884-021-6

Campbell J.M. (2007) Slavery on Trial: Race, Class, and Criminal Justice in Antebellum Richmond, Virginia (University Press of Florida). ISBN13: 978-0-8130-3091-3 http://hdl.handle.net/2381/3283

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Campbell, J. M. (2024) “The Penalty of a Tyrant’s Law’: Slavery and Crime in the Nineteenth-Century American South, in James Campbell and Vivien Miller eds. The Routledge History of Crime in America (Routledge).

Campbell, J. M. (2017) Death Row Resistance, Politics and Capital Punishment in 1970s Jamaica. Crime, History & Societies, 21 (1).

Campbell, J. M. (2015) Murder Appeals, Delayed Executions, and the Origins of Jamaican Death Penalty Jurisprudence. Law and History Review, 33 (2), pp. 435-466 http://hdl.handle.net/2381/29218

Campbell, J. M. (2014) "At “war against our institutions”: Cultures of Policing and Punishment in the Slave Cities of the United States and Brazil" in Vivien Miller and James Campbell eds. Transnational Penal Cultures: New Perspectives on Discipline, Punishment and Desistance (Routledge).

Campbell, J. M. (2013) The death of Frank Wilson: Race, crime, and punishment in post-civil war Pennsylvania. American Nineteenth Century History, 14 (3), pp. 305-323 10.1080/14664658.2013.830385

Campbell, J. M. (2013) “African Americans in Freedom.” In Sally Hadden and Al Brophy, eds. A Companion to American Legal History (Blackwell).

Campbell, J. M. (2011) African Americans and Parole in Depression Era New York. Historical Journal, 54 (4), pp. 1065-1086 http://hdl.handle.net/2381/23142

Campbell, J. M. (2011) Richmond (Va.), 1790-1828. In Richardson Dilworth, ed., Cities in American Political History (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press).

Campbell, J. M. (2010) You needn't be afraid here; you're in a civilized country: Region, racial violence, and law enforcement in early twentieth-century New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. Social History, 35, pp. 253-67 http://hdl.handle.net/2381/23163

Campbell, J. M. (2008) African Americans in Southern Cities. In James Campbell and Rebecca Fraser, eds. Reconstruction: People and Perspectives in American Social History (ABC-CLIO).

Campbell, J. M. (2006) Nat Turner’s Rebellion. In Junius P. Rodriguez, ed. The Encyclopedia of Slave Resistance and Rebellion (ABC-CLIO).

Campbell, J. M. (2006) The Law of Slavery. In Paul Finkelman, ed. The Encyclopedia of the New American Nation (Charles Scribner's Sons).

Campbell, J. M. (2005) ‘‘The victim of prejudice and hasty consideration’: Urban Slave Society and the Slave Trial System in Richmond, Virginia, 1830-1861.’  Slavery and Abolition, 26, 1, pp. 71-92.

Campbell, J. M. (2004) A Murderer of a somewhat dark complexion: Criminal Justice and Constructions of Race in Antebellum Virginia. American Nineteenth Century History, 5 (3), pp. 28-49 10.1080/1466465042000302755 http://hdl.handle.net/2381/2488

Campbell, J. M. (2003) African American Victims and Responses to Crime in Antebellum Richmond, Virginia.  US Studies Online, 3.

I have supervised PhD students on topics including poverty in mid-nineteenth America, The American Equal Rights Association, the Mountain Meadows Massacre in 1850s Utah and slavery in Louisiana.

I welcome PhD applications in US political and social history (especially the 19th century), histories of slavery, and histories of crime and criminal justice in the United States, the Caribbean and British Empire.

I am experienced at supervising US-based students via distance learning.

I enjoy teaching and deliver modules on a wide range of topics to undergraduate and postgraduate students on History, Politics and Â鶹APP Relations degrees.

My most recent new module is 'The Death Penalty: a Global History.'Inspired by research for my forthcoming book, Reluctant Abolitionists (CUP), it looks at the law, politics, practice and abolition of capital punishment in the past and present.

I also teach modules on United States history, from the revolutionary era to the present day. These include the first-year core module 'With Liberty and Justice for All? US History since 1776', and the option modules 'Fight the Power: Race, Rights and Protest in the USA', 'Slavery, Abolition and Reconstruction in the United States' and 'Crime and Punishment in African American History'. I have extensive experience teaching students historical skills, supervising dissertations and developing innovative forms of assessment.

At postgraduate level, I teach historical research methods on the core module 'Historical Research, Historical Writing', and coordinate the module 'American Freedom? Rhetoric and Reality in the United States.'

Death Penalty history in the United States and British Empire.