Dr. Josephine Tierney

Biography

Josephine Tierney is a modern historian focusing on global trade, business history, and material culture. She is particularly interested in cross-cultural exchange and globalization, and her current research as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Manchester investigates the diffusion of European consumer goods in Africa during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Through a trans-imperial study, she examines how African consumers interacted with and experienced imported consumer goods from major European companies like Lever Brothers. Josephine has a PhD in History from the University of Warwick, where her doctoral research centered on the export of British printed textiles to West Africa from approximately 1870 to 1914. This work explored material culture, including surviving pattern books and samples, to understand how African consumers influenced the design, production, and distribution of imported textiles. Additionally, she has worked on projects related to the history of Lever Brothers’ plantations in the Solomon Islands and the Belgian Congo, contributing to the knowledge surrounding UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Research Interests

Experience