Dr Claire Eldridge wins the 2017 Gladstone Prize
We are enormously proud of Claire Eldridge's achievement in winning the Gladstone Prize for From Empire to Exile: History and Memory within the pied-noir and harki communities,1962-2012
The Royal Historical Society’s judges commented:
This remarkable book sheds new light on the Algerian War of Independence (1954-62) by focusing on the ‘commemorative afterlives’ of the conflict. Of central significance are the tens of thousands of harkis (native auxiliaries of the French army) and the million or so pieds noirs (French settlers), who relocated to France in the wake of the conflict. In a deeply researched and extremely well written book, Claire Eldridge reconceptualizes the ways in which the Algerian War has been remembered and commemorated in France. Eldridge breaks new ground in her exciting analysis of memory as the ‘agency-driven, interactive creation’ of multi-vocal, competing representations of the conflict and all that it meant. Dismissing the long held public view that this was a ‘forgotten war’ Eldridge has written one of the most important studies of the effects of decolonization on the former colonial power. It is a worthy winner of the Royal Historical Society’s Gladstone Prize for 2017.
Not only is Claire a brilliant scholar she is an outstanding teacher and our much valued colleague. Claire will be on well-deserved leave in 2017-18 to work on her next book.
Dr Claire Eldridge's book "From empire to exile, History and memory within the pied-noir and harki communities, 1962–2012" is published by Manchester University Press.
