Professor Claire Eldridge

Profile

I am a social and cultural historian of France and the French Empire with a particular interest in the historical relationship between France and Algeria. My work focuses on the complex relationships between different ethno-religious groups within the empire, as well as between these communities and metropolitan France. Adopting a multi-disciplinary approach, my research aims to overcome the tendency to study these ethno-religious communities in isolation, emphasising instead the zones of contact and spaces of interaction that have existed in different colonial and postcolonial moments, underlining the centrality of empire to the history and identity of modern France.

My first book, From Empire to Exile: History and memory within the Pied-noir and Harki Communities was published by Manchester University Press in 2016, and was awarded the Royal Historical Society’s Gladstone Prize in 2017. My research has appeared in French Historical Studies, History and Memory, History Workshop Journal, Past & Present, the Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales, War in History, and elsewhere. I serve as the co-editor of the journal French History, published by Oxford University Press, and am a member of the Society for the Study of French History. I also sit on the editorial boards of European History Quarterly and French Colonial History. My research has been funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, and the Gerda Henkel Stiftung, among others. 

Responsibilities

• Director of Research and Innovation
• Ethics Lead

Research interests

Situated at the intersection between history and memory studies, my first major research project challenged the idea that the Algerian War of Independence (1954-62) was a ‘forgotten’ conflict that only returned to French public attention in the 1990s. Reconceptualising how the Algerian War has been debated and commemorated in France, my findings demonstrate how previously understudied postcolonial minorities have consistently shaped the landscapes of French politics, culture and society since 1962.This reflects my broader interest in how European societies negotiate competing claims on their national histories and memories in the public arena, particularly with respect to divisive and violent pasts; a topic I have also explored in relation to the Centenary of the First World War.

My current research expands my interests into histories of crime and criminal justice by addressing questions of intersecting inequalities and the racialised nature of justice and policing in a historical context. It focuses on the multi-ethnic divisions of France’s so-called ‘African Army’ which contained a high proportion the 211,3000 colonised Muslim subjects mobilised from North Africa between to fight for France during the First World War. Using French military justice archives in new ways, the project considers what ‘crimes’ committed by soldiers serving in African Army units can tell us about the experiences and the social and emotional worlds of these men. As one of the few sources to contain the voices of both colonised combatants and the socio-economically marginalised ‘white’ soldiers they fought alongside (European settlers, naturalised Algerian Jews and metropolitan Frenchmen), military justice archives offer access to the perspectives of actors who are otherwise scarce within the historical record and ways to explore interactions between these communities of combatants.

I enjoy working collaboratively and have undertaken several editorial projects that bring researchers together to shape new directions in our fields. With Rabah Aissaoui, I co-edited the volume Algeria Revisited: History, Culture and Identity, published by Bloomsbury in 2017. I have also guest-edited a special issue of the journal French History on ‘French Colonial Histories from Below’ with Jennifer Sessions, and worked with Julie M. Powell on a special issue of French Historical Studies entitled ‘War Makes Monsters: Crime and Criminality in Times of Conflict’.

Professional memberships

• Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
• Society for the Study of French History
• French Colonial Historical Society

Student education

I convene and contribute to a range of research-led modules at undergraduate and postgraduate level that are linked to my interests and expertise in histories of race, empire, memory, migration, crime and criminality. These modules examine key moments in the history of France and the French empire across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with a particular emphasis on the interconnectedness of empire and metropole and the enduring legacies of these ties. I use a wide variety of multi-media source materials in my teaching to ensure students have access to a diverse array of historical actors, voices and perspectives.

Research groups and institutes

• Empires and Aftermath
• War Studies

Current postgraduate researchers

• Joshua Alston
• Freddie Coombes
• Lou Khalfaoui