Mason McClure

MA Student

Advisor: Nicholas Popper
Current Research: Atlantic World, Virginia, Seventeenth Century

Bio

Mason is an M.A student interested in the development of labor, class, and slavery in Virginia and the larger Atlantic World during the Long Seventeenth Century. He currently researches how English common law was adapted and augmented in Virginia to fit a society with vastly different economic, social, and racial compositions. The comparative governance of Virginia under Charles I, Cromwell, and after the Restoration are also key areas of intrigue to Mason.

While an undergraduate at Illinois State University, where he received his B.A in History in 2025, he researched the solidification of slave law in Virginia through the lens of seventeenth century women who sued for their freedom in the 1650s. For his senior thesis, Mason published "Key’s Case and Changing Status in the Vast Atlantic World, 1652-1667," in the ISU student journal. For his work, he won the William and Jeanne Howard Scholarship Winner for Best History Paper and the Lucy Lucile Tasher Senior Scholarship, the ISU History Department's highest honor.