Politics - Anti-fascist Solidarity during the Spanish Civil War: Correspondence to the League of Nations, 1936-1939

Supervisor: Dr Sarah Arens (Languages, Cultures and Film) and Dr Nicola Mathieson (Politics).

Supervisor bio: 

Dr Sarah Arens joined the University of Liverpool in 2021 as a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow (2019-2023) and as a Lecturer in French (since March 2023), having previously worked at the Universities of St Andrews, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Bristol and Yale University. Her research focuses on the histories, texts, and visual cultures produced during and in the aftermath of Belgian and French colonialism. She also has a broad range of research interests, from colonial and postcolonial museums to environmental history, and the connections between colonialism and the contemporary global far right.

Dr Nicola Mathieson is a lecturer in International Relations at the University of Liverpool. Prior to this role, she was Research Director at the Global Network on Extremism and Technology (GNET) in the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) at King’s College University (KCL). Dr Mathieson holds a PhD in International Relations from the Australian National University. I also hold an MPhil in International Relations from the University of Oxford. Dr Mathieson specialises in peace and conflict studies including civil wars and insurgencies, foreign fighters, peacekeeping, terrorism, and counter-terrorism studies, as well as extremism studies.

Email: nicola.mathieson@liverpool.ac.uk; s.arens@liverpool.ac.uk

School: Histories, Languages, and Cultures

Department: Politics

Module code: HIST001

Suitable for students of: This project is interdisciplinary and would suit multilingual students from History, Politics, Languages, International Relations and Law. 

Desired experience or requirements: 

This project is a translation process and requires a good working ability in English (B2), as well as at least one of the following languages (at a minimum B2 level):

• Spanish
• French 
• German

Students should also be familiar with working in excel. It would be beneficial, though not essential, to have experience working with archival material.

Places available: 4

Start dates: Session 1 (15th June 2026),Session 2 (6th July 2026)

Project length: 4 or 8 weeks

Virtual option: Yes

Hybrid option: Yes

Project description:

This project is led by Dr Sarah Arens (Languages, Cultures and Film) and Dr Nicola Mathieson (Politics).

This interdisciplinary project is the first to map written communications sent to the League of Nations (LoN) in the late 1930s by antifascist organisations on intervention in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). This project seeks to better understand the transnational and multilingual networks of these grassroots organisations and the role these networks would play in their future development during and after World War II. Bringing together approaches and methodologies from across History, Political Sciences including IR, and Modern Languages, this timely project illuminates what so-far overlooked archival records can tell us about the history of interaction between the public, political grassroots organisations, and the LoN. At this stage of the project, we are creating an original database by translating the remaining Spanish, German and French communications. Students will also have the opportunity to analyse the themes within the archives in preparation for publication.

Additional requirements: N/A