FACULTY & STAFF

Dr. Jill C. Bender

Contact Information

Email: jcbender@uncg.edu
Office: MHRA 2111
Office Phone: 336-334-5992

Education

Ph.D., Boston College, 2011
M.A., National University of Ireland, Galway, 2002
B.A., College of William and Mary, 1999

Academic Positions

Director of Graduate Studies, 2020-
Director of Undergraduate Studies, 2018-2020
Rebecca A. Lloyd Distinguished Residential Fellow, Lloyd International Honors College, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2017-2018
Associate Professor, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2017-
Assistant Professor, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2011-2017
Teaching Fellow, Boston College, Fall 2008, Spring 2010
Teaching Assistant, Boston College, 2004-2007

Research Interests

Britain and the British Empire, global history, imperial networks, race, violence, migration

Listen to an interview with Dr. Bender:

Current Project

My scholarship explores the interaction among a range of British colonies for insight into the mechanics of the nineteenth-century British Empire. My first book, The 1857 Indian Uprising and the British Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2016), traced the repercussions of the 1857 rebellion across Ireland, Jamaica, New Zealand, and the Cape Colony in southern Africa. In this and other publications, I understand the British Empire as a global system of composite parts, and I argue that nineteenth-century actors—from colonial authorities to anti-imperial nationalists—recognized the empire as a unified entity in which the lessons learned in one colony could be borrowed to meet the needs of another.

My current book project allows me to continue to pursue my interests in mid-nineteenth-century colonial connections and power relations. In this study, I turn to migration, examining state-sponsored efforts to transport Irish women across the British World.

Courses Taught

• HIS 208: Topics in World History I: European Expansion and Empires
• HIS 314: The Modern British Empire, 1750-present
• HIS 374: British History, 1688-present
• HSS 122: Hunger, Food, and Power in the British Empire (Honors)
• HSS 222: War, Gender, and Crime in Victorian News (Honors)
• HIS 511B Seminar in Historical Research and Writing: The Great Hunger: Ireland, Empire, and Famine
• HIS 514 Topics in World History: Ireland, India, and the British Empire
• HIS 709 Introductory Research Seminar: The Nineteenth-Century British Empire
• HIS 716 Graduate Colloquium in World History (team taught)
• UNCG Emeritus Society courses: Ireland and the Great Famine; War, Gender, and Crime in Victorian News

Selected Publications

• "The 'Piniana' Question: Irish Fenians and the New Zealand Wars," in Ireland in an Imperial World: Citizenship, Opportunism, and Subversion, eds. Michael de Nie, Tim McMahon, and Paul Townend (Palgrave MacMillan, 2017), 203-222.
• The 1857 Indian Uprising and the British Empire, (Cambridge University Press, 2016; paperback 2018).
• "Ireland and Empire," in The Princeton History of Modern Ireland, eds. Richard Bourke and Ian McBride (Princeton University Press, 2016), 343-360.
• "Sir George Grey and the 1857 Indian Rebellion: the unmaking and making of an imperial career," in Mutiny at the Margins: New Perspectives on the Indian Uprising of 1857, vol. 2, Britain and the Indian Uprising, eds. Crispin Bates and Marina Carter (Sage, 2013), 199-218.
• "The Imperial Politics of Famine: the 1873-4 Bengal Famine and Irish Parliamentary Nationalism," Eire-Ireland, 42, 1-2 (2007): 132-156.

Selected Awards and Honors

• Rebecca A. Lloyd Distinguished Residential Fellow, Lloyd International Honors College, UNCG, 2017-2018
• Faculty First Summer Scholarship Support Award, UNCG, 2016
• Donald and Hélène White Prize for Outstanding Dissertation in the Humanities, Boston College, May 2011
• Smith Richardson Predoctoral Fellowship, International Security Studies, Yale University, 2010-2011
• U.S. Graduate Student Fulbright Fellowship, New Zealand, 2009

For more awards and honors, see vitae

Master's Research Projects Directed:

• Katharine E. Duckworth, "Nourishment in times of scarcity: The peasant mothers of Ireland’s Great Famine" (2018)
• Kristen Thomas, "'It is Not Our Policy to Occupy, but to Extort Silver and Gold,': The First Opium War & the Informal British Empire," (2018)
• Shawn Reagin, "The First World War on the Periphery: The Environment of German East Africa, 1914-1918" (2017)
• Elizabeth (Ashley) Peters, "Labour, the League of Nations and British Foreign Policy" (2015)

External Links:

The 1857 Indian Uprising and the British Empire, (Cambridge University Press, 2016; paperback 2018).

Curriculum Vitae