Meet Dr. Nicole Breault – History Department’s new Assistant Professor of Colonial American History
Dr. Nicole Breault is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Texas El Paso. Her research interests are in early American legal and social history with an emphasis on urban governance, institutions, gender, and material culture. She received her doctorate from the University of Connecticut where she completed her dissertation, “The Night Watch of Boston: Law and Governance in Eighteenth-Century British America.” Her research has been supported by fellowships from the American Historical Association, American Philosophical Society, Boston Athenæum, Huntington Library, Massachusetts Historical Society, Roanoke College, and UConn Humanities Institute. Her book manuscript-in-progress “Set the Watch: Policing and Governance in Revolutionary Boston” draws on a neglected collection of night constables’ reports to examine the work of the watch alongside key events of the 1750s to 1790s. Her work reframes the history of the imperial crisis and revolution through the discourse of local authority and police powers, situating quotidian experiences in the larger transatlantic dialogue on law, empire, and subjecthood.