Mimi is a third year PhD student at the University of Oxford. Mimi’s thesis looks at the sugar trade in the 17th century. Mimi is interested in why and how people ate sugar right at the beginning of the industry’s expansion. Mimi is asking why demand at home, in England and North America, would have encouraged the development of plantations and the trafficking of enslaved African people. Mimi is excited by the way this research speaks to questions we’re asking of ourselves today as it deals with issues of race, consumer desire, capitalism, and exploitation.
Before starting at Oxford, Mimi worked at Sotheby’s auction house.