School of Languages and Area Studies (SLAS)

Profile

The focus of my research is modern Algerian and French history. In particular, I am interested in oral history, gender studies and the relationship between history, memory and the construction of identities in both Europe and Africa. I have carried out extensive field research in Algeria and France since 2005, including interviewing Algerian women who participated in the War of Independence (1954-1962) about their experiences in post-colonial Algeria and their memories of the conflict, and carrying out a case study at a teacher training college in Algiers on the teaching of history and the transmission of memory. I am currently working on a monograph under contract to Manchester University Press, provisionally entitled Our fighting sisters: nation, memory and gender in Algeria, 1954-2012.

I am admissions tutor for the MA Francophone Africa and I coordinate and teach on a range of undergraduate and postgraduate units covering European and African history, politics, culture and society.

Qualifications

PhD in History, Queen Mary, University of London (2008) “To be a moudjahida in independent Algeria: itineraries and memories of women veterans of the Algerian War of Independence.” Supervisor: Professor Julian Jackson; Prof. Gilbert Meynier (Nancy II, France) and Dr. James McDougall (SOAS, University of London).

BA Joint Honours in French and History (First Class), Balliol College, University of Oxford (2004)

Research Clusters

Francophone Studies

Current Research Projects

I am currently a lead member of a three-year British Academy sponsored UK-Africa Academic Partnership, investigating the participation of Senegalese soldiers in the French army during the Algerian War. This involves training postgraduate students and young scholars in Algeria and Senegal to carry out an oral history project amongst older generations who participated in both sides of the conflict. For more information on this project see: http://www.port.ac.uk/research/africanoralhistory/

Publications

Books

• Our fighting sisters: nation, memory and gender in Algeria, 1954-2012 [working title] (under contract with Manchester University Press)
• The Algerian War (Studies in European History series) (Under contract with Palgrave Macmillan)

Edited collections/ journal special issues

• France and the Mediterranean: International Relations, Culture and Politics (Peter Lang, 2011), co-edited with Emmanuel Godin.     
• Joint guest editor of a special issue of Stichproben: Vienna Journal of African Studies on ‘Fracturing Binarisms: Gender and Colonialisms in Africa,’ no. 12, Dec 2007 with Odile Georg and Marie Rodet. To view this issue please click here.  

Journal articles

• ‘Saintly grandmothers: youth reception and reinterpretation of the national past in contemporary Algeria’, Journal of North African Studies, 18: 1 (2013) Link: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13629387.2012.728049 
• ‘Transgressing Boundaries: gender, race, religion and “Françaises musulmanes” during the Algerian War of Independence’, French Historical Studies, 33:1 (2010) http://fhs.dukejournals.org/content/33/3/445.full.pdf+html 
• ‘La mémoire des femmes algériennes de la guerre de libération algérienne’, Raison présente (2010)

Book chapters

• ‘Questioning the colonial fracture: the Algerian War as a “useful past” in contemporary France and Algeria’ chapter in a volume which I coedited with E. Godin, France and the Mediterranean: International Relations, Culture and Politics (Peter Lang, 2011)
• ‘France, Islam and laïcité: colonial exceptions, contemporary reinventions and European convergence’ chapter in T. Chafer and E. Godin, The End of the French Exception (Palgrave, 2010)

Selected recent online publications

• In Amenas - a history of silence, not a history of violence, Textures du temps, (20 Jan 2013) http://texturesdutemps.hypotheses.org/576 (translated into French and Arabic)
• 'The 50th anniversary of Algerian independence [...] LSE EUROPPblog, (19 July 2013) http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2012/07/19/algeria-independence/
• France and Algeria: Fifty Years After Independence, Modern and Contemporary France Virtual Special Issue (July 2013): http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/explore/cmcf-vsi-france-algeria.pdf

Conferences organised

• Joint organiser of an international conference to mark 50 years of Algerian independence, Algerian and Arab Revolutions: an international and comparative perspective, University of Portsmouth, 15-17 March 2012.
• Joint organiser of the Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France (ASMCF) 30^th annual conference on France and the Mediterranean: representations, policy, transnationalism, University of Portsmouth, 3-5 September 2009.
• Organiser of North Africa and the Middle East: Interdisciplinary and Multimedia Perspectives, University of Portsmouth, 18 March 2009. A study afternoon with an emphasis on teaching methods and interdisciplinary approaches, externally funded by the Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies.
• Organiser of Beyond the France/Algeria binarism? University of Portsmouth, 2 April 2008. A half-day conference bringing together international scholars, funded by the ASMCF and the Society for the Study of French History.
• I have been invited to present my research at national and international conferences and workshops in the UK (including at the Universities of Oxford, London, Exeter, Manchester and the Institute of Historical Research); in the rest of Europe (including the Institut d’histoire du temps présent in Paris, Université Paris-Sorbonne, the University of Vienna and the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon); in Africa (the Médi-Café conference in Tunis, the West African Research Centre in Dakar, the Ecole normale supérieure in Algiers, the Centre National de Recherche en Anthropologie Sociale et Culturelle in Oran), in Australia (Georges Rudé seminar) and the United States (African Studies Association, and I was also invited to participate in, and funded to attend, the National History Center and Library of Congress’s month-long decolonisation seminar in June 2009).

External funding awarded

• Leverhulme Trust: Artist in Residence Scheme Sept 2012-June 2013: Principal applicant for an award of £14,500, enabling artist Patrick Altes to take up a year-long residency at the University of Portsmouth. By bringing an area studies department into direct contact with artistic processes, the residency seeks to contribute to academic, artistic and popular debates about the relationship between power and representations.
• Arts and Humanities Research Council Early Career Fellowship July-Dec 2012: Awarded £36,128 to complete project ‘Rewriting the veteran: gender, geography, generation and the Algerian War’.
• British Academy UK-Africa Academic Partnerships. I played a key role in the team which successfully bid for £27,495 for a three-year project building links between the Universities of Portsmouth, Dakar and Algiers to develop a comparative and transgenerational oral history project with veterans of the Algerian War from Algeria and Senegal.
• 2004-2007: Three-year Queen Mary/Royal Holloway/University of London Institute in Paris PhD bursary.
• 2006: Royal Historical Society, for travel to the African Studies Association conference, San Francisco, US.
• 2006: Queen Mary University of London Stretton Fund, for travel to the George Rudé conference, Adelaide, Australia.
• 2005: £1,250 from the University of London Central Research fund for travel and research to Algeria.