Laura Channing’s research focuses on the economic history of West Africa in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her PhD dissertation examines taxation and taxpayers in Sierra Leone, focusing on the relationship between direct taxes and different forms of colonial governance. She has also worked on labour, wages, and household income in West Africa.

Laura is the Economic History Society Anniversary Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research. She received her BA in History from King’s College London and her MPhil and PhD from Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge. In 2019-20 she was the Jane Eliza Procter Fellow at Princeton University.