Education

2016 University of South Florida, B.A.
2019 University of South Florida, M.A.
2025 Florida State University, Ph.D.

Courses Taught

Wars and Revolutions in the Modern World 

Career Specialties

Kiri Raber's areas of academic interest focus on the British Atlantic World in the early modern period. Specifically, she looks at families in Jamaica in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and how the formations of family within the confines of Jamaica can at times be a mirror of the British Empire.  

Professional and Community Activities

Raber recently defended her dissertation, "Empire and Kinship: Family and Authority in the British Atlantic World." This dissertation centers on the family within the British Empire, specifically focusing on Jamaica in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as well as touching on the Chesapeake region. It examines the ways in which family was integral to the structure of empire, and demonstrates that understanding the contours of family, how it was defined and codified, provides new ways to analyze the power and reach of the empire, as well as the lives of its subjects. In addition to underpinning some forms of imperial control and wealth accumulation, family was also a system that could be used to resist imperial authority, as women used it as a legal and extra-legal means to create kinship connections that would otherwise be unrecognized within their communities. Jamaica was at the center of debates where the value of the colony was both defended and denounced. 

Raber has two books review publications available; one through H-War on "The Great Anglo-Russian Naval Alliance of the Eighteenth Century and Beyond" by Philip MacDougall, and the other through H-Slavery on a book entitled "Fugitive Movements" by James O'Neil Spady.

Raber frequently attends conferences, such as the North American Conference on British Studies, as well as the Southern Conference on British Studies. She was also an active member of the Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies Group at Florida State University, where she edited the website and helped to run an undergraduate essay contest. 

Honors and Awards

Charles Perry Graduate Student Prize Honorable Mention, Southern Conference on British Studies
Dean's Award for Doctoral Excellence, Florida State University
Martin-Vegue Fellowship, Florida State University
Ermine M. Owenby, Jr., Fund to Promote Excellence, Florida State University