Ryan entered the History PhD program in 2017. He studies the social and carceral histories of subaltern African diasporic women and men in the Americas, particularly the Anglo-Caribbean. His current research explores how black workers in post-Emancipation Jamaica transformed their everyday market and political-ecological practices in response to erratic weather patterns and contestation over water resources. In a past life, Ryan sailed around the Caribbean as an electronics technician in the US Coast Guard from 2002 to 2008.