Hilary Jones teaches and researches about West Africa and its interconnected histories with Europe and the Americas. Jones studied at University Cheikh Anta Diop (Dakar, Senegal) during her junior year at Spelman College. She went on to earn the PhD in African History at Michigan State University in 2003, minoring in Comparative Black History and African Art History. Jones’ first book, The Métis of Senegal: Urban Life and Politics in French West Africa (Indiana University Press, 2013) examines mixed race identity and the role of Senegal’s Afro-European population in the social, economic, and political life of Senegal’s nineteenth century Atlantic and French colonial towns. Jones’ second monograph, in progress, is a history of Senegal’s engagements and entanglements in the Atlantic World from the impact of the Haitian Revolution to “Antillean” identity in colonial Senegal and reimagining African Diaspora after World War II when Caribbean and American artists and professionals travelled to and established communities in post-colonial Senegal. The recipient of a Fulbright IIE Scholar award and a Senior National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship from the Council on American Overseas Studies Centers, Jones conducted field research in Senegal for the book project during early spring 2020. In undergraduate teaching, Jones offers survey courses on Africa’s precolonial and colonial past, as well as seminars on Slavery and the Slave Trade in Africa, African Gender History, and histories of multicultural France. She advises graduate students in Atlantic History and teaches graduate seminars on Africa and Africans in the Atlantic World, the Transatlantic Slave Trade, and Historical Perspectives on West Africa.

The Métis of Senegal: Urban Life and Politics in French West Africa. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2013.

Hilary Jones and Caroline Faria. “A Darling of the Beauty Trade: Race, Care, and the Lebanese Styling of Synthetic Hair.” Cultural Geographies 27,1(2020): 85-99. “Women, Race, and Ethnicity.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. Oxford University Press, 2020 (online). Hilary Jones and Emily Clark, "Transatlantic Currents of Orientalism: New Orleans Quadroons and Saint-Louis, Senegal Signares," in New Orleans, Louisiana and Saint Louis, Senegal: Mirror Cities in the Atlantic World, 1659-2000s. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2019. “Women, Family, and Daily Life in Senegal’s Nineteenth Century Atlantic Towns.” In African Women in the Atlantic World: Property, Vulnerability, and Mobility 1680-1880. Edited by Mariana Candido and Adam Jones. London: James Currey Press, 2019. “Originaire Women and Political Life in Senegal’s Four Communes.” In Black French Women and the Struggle for Equality 1848-2015, edited by Felix Germain and Sylaine Larcher. University of Nebraska Press, 2018, Chapter 1. “The Signares, mixed race women of Senegambia, sixteenth and eighteenth centuries/Les Signares, femmes métisses de Sénégambie, XVIe-XVIIIe siècles, in Sexe & Colonies: An Illustrated Catalog of Images and Documents, edited by Pascal Blanchard, Nicolas Bancel, Gilles Böetsch, Rachel Jean-Baptiste, Christelle Taraud, and Dominic Thomas. Paris: ACHAC, 2018. “Fugitive Slaves and Christian Evangelism in French West Africa: A Protestant Mission in late Nineteenth-century Senegal,” Slavery & Abolition 38:1(2017): 76-94. “Rethinking Politics in the Colony: The Métis of Senegal and Electoral Politics in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century,” Journal of African History 53, 3 (2012): 325-344