Jessica Harland-Jacobs received her BA in history from Cornell University in 1992 and her MA and PhD (2000) from Duke University, where she studied British, imperial, and Canadian history and historical geography. Her first book, Builders of Empire: Freemasonry and British Imperialism, 1717-1927, was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2007. She has published articles in the Journal of Religious History, Journal of British Studies, Journal for Research into Freemasonry and Fraternalism, The Geographical Review, and Atlantic Studies. Her current book project concerns the question of how empires manage religious diversity by examining the incorporation of Catholic colonies into the British Empire from the early eighteenth to the early nineteenth century. It explores British attitudes and policies towards their “new subjects” as well as the experiences of Catholics as they became subjects of a Protestant empire in a period of global war and imperial expansion. A related project looks at the many Protestant settlement schemes proposed for “peopling” the British Empire during the eighteenth century.
A winner of department, college, and university teaching awards, Professor Harland-Jacobs teaches courses and trains graduate students in modern Britain and the British Empire, Ireland, imperialism, and the Atlantic world. She has directed multiple senior theses and University Scholars and welcomes the opportunity to work with undergraduates on research projects.