Education: 

• MA (History) - College of Charleston and The Citadel, 2023
• BA (History) - University of South Carolina, 2021

Advisor: Dr. Nicole Maskiell

Bio:

John Paden "J.P." Wilson is earning his PhD in Early American History as well as his MA in Public History. He studies the histories of trade, transit, and cultural exchange centering on maritime music in the colonial era (c. 1670-1840). His current project, tentatively titled “Silent Sailors, Singing Shorelines,” explores the ways that political ideas spread musically through the global maritime sphere prior to the wide adoption of sea shanties.

A native of Fort Mill, South Carolina, J.P. graduated from the University of South Carolina in 2021 with a BA in History. He moved to the Lowcountry and received his MA in History from College of Charleston and The Citadel's joint graduate program in 2023. His master's thesis, "Counterrevolutionary Bermuda: Privateering and Loyalism in the Revolutionary British Atlantic" was completed under the supervision of Dr. Sandy Slater. He has returned to Columbia for his doctoral study.

J.P. previously worked as a part of the Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World (CLAW) organization at College of Charleston. He has also conducted interviews for the Charleston Oral History Program at The Citadel. Since Summer of 2024, J.P. has worked for Dr. Melissa Stuckey in her ongoing Northeastern North Carolina African American Research and Cultural Heritage Institute project at Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina.

He has presented papers at the 7th Slave Dwelling Project Conference and the 35th Annual Meeting of the Southeastern World History Association. 

J.P. is the 2024 Recipient of the Walter Edgar Scholarship from the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in South Carolina, Columbia Town Meeting. He also received the College of Charleston Graduate Department of History Class of 2023’s Outstanding Student Award, and received the 2022 College of Charleston Principal’s Fellowship.

He is the incumbent president of the University of South Carolina Graduate History Association.