Ph.D., University of Chicago

Dr. Abigail Swingen's research interests include the origins and consequences of England's Financial Revolution, the development of the British empire in the early modern period, ideas of political economy, and the development of early modern political culture, stereotypes, and disinformation. Her current book, The Financial Revolution and the Politics of Moral Crisis in Early Modern Britain explores the connections between the emergence of Britain as a financial capitalist economy, the politics of public credit and the national debt, and how people responded to major economic and social change. In 2023-24, Dr. Swingen was the NEH Long-Term Fellow at the Huntington Library in San Marino, CA and in 2024-25, she held an Award for Faculty at Hispanic Serving Institutions from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Dr. Swingen's first book, Competing Visions of Empire: Labor, Slavery, and the Origins of the British Atlantic Empire (Yale University Press, 2015), explores how English politics and ideas of political economy influenced the development of African slavery and other forms of coerced labor in England's West Indies colonies during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. It won the Second Place President's Faculty Book Award at Texas Tech for 2017. In 2011-2012, she was a Barbara Thom Postdoctoral Fellow at the Huntington Library. She has presented at a variety of conferences and workshops in the U.S. and Europe, including the North American Conference on British Studies, the Huntington Library, Early Modern Studies Institute of the University of Southern California, the Newberry Library, Princeton University, the British Historical Studies Colloquium at Yale University, the University of Tubingen, the Institute of Historical Research in London, and the University of Chicago. She is an editor for the Politics, Society and Culture in Early Modern Britain Series at Manchester University Press and an Associate Review Editor for the American Historical Review.

Dr. Swingen teaches courses in early modern British and European history, the Atlantic World, and Western Civilization. In 2014, she received the President's Excellence in Teaching Award from Texas Tech. She received her B.A. in history with honors from Swarthmore College and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. From 2019-2021, she served as Associate Vice President for Research in the Office of Research & Innovation.