Bristol University has hired a professor of slavery history in an attempt to discover whether it needs to apologise for its colonial past.

The institution has commissioned Prof Olivette Otele, an expert in the history of colonialism in Britain and France, to carry out a two year research project into the involvement of the University of Bristol and the wider city in the transatlantic slave trade.

The university said it will decide at the end of the two years how to appropriately acknowledge its past links with colonialism, which could include making a public apology or statement.

It comes after a campaign by Bristol students to rename the Wills Memorial Building, which was named after the university's founding chancellor Henry Overton Wills III. The Wills family derived their wealth from shipping tobacco from the New World into Bristol.

The university announced in 2017 that it would not rename the building, saying: "We cannot alter the past but we can enable reflection upon it and add to knowledge about slavery past and present."

Bristol is the latest institution to investigate its past links with colonialism. Earlier this year, Glasgow University became the first in Britain to announce a package of reparations for its benefit from the slave trade.