Donovan Fifield

Donovan Fifield is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of History, Faculty of Humanities, at the University of Tübingen, holding this position since August 2024 as part of the ERC Atlantic Exiles Project.

His educational background includes:

• Ph.D. in History from the University of Virginia (2024), with dissertation titled "Obligation & Tension: Credit, War, and Imperial Crisis in the British-American Northeast, 1688-1775."
• M.A. in History from the University of Virginia (2020), with thesis "Arrears of Empire: War, Finance, and the Origins of the British-American Imperial Crisis, 1739-1775."
• M.A. in History from Memorial University of Newfoundland (2023), with thesis "Savagely Factious: Commercial Integration and Social Conflict in Colonial Massachusetts."
• B.A. (Honors) in History from the University of Connecticut (2017), with thesis "The Efforts of Trade: Commodities, World Markets, and Early American Labor".

His research centers on social and economic history, specifically examining the Acadian expulsion during the Seven Years' War and the Loyalist diaspora after the American Revolution. He investigates economic transitions among displaced populations, focusing on property rights, public finance mechanisms, and adaptation to new economic systems across the Atlantic world. His work bridges Colonial North America, Imperialism in the Atlantic World, and Economic History through empirical analysis of credit systems, war finance, and imperial crisis dynamics.

As a postdoctoral researcher funded by the European Research Council's Atlantic Exiles Project, Fifield conducts primary source analysis on exile communities while contributing to collaborative research on transatlantic displacement patterns. His position provides dedicated grant support for archival research and publication activities within Tübingen's Modern History framework.

Dr. Fifield operates within the Department of History's Modern History section at the University of Tübingen, specifically contributing to the History of the 19th century research group under the Faculty of Humanities, where he collaborates on projects analyzing imperial crises and economic transformations.