Professor Kate Marsh BA (Hons) (Oxon), PhD

Professor of French Studies Languages, Cultures and Film

    Professor Kate Marsh, a highly respected and much-liked friend, colleague, and tutor, died in April 2019 following a short illness. Kate made an enormous contribution to many different areas of activity within Modern Languages & Cultures, more widely across the School, Faculty, and University, and – as an outstanding scholar – to the range of disciplines with which she engaged in her research. She will be greatly missed by many cohorts of students, friends, and colleagues in Liverpool and beyond.

    About

    Personal Statement

    A specialist in French colonial history, I came to Liverpool in 2005 as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow after studying in Oxford and Paris.

    My primary research area is French colonial history (1715–1962) and the postcolonial cultural legacies of empire in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (including Francophone postcolonial literatures). Working extensively on cultural representations of empire in a comparative European context (from the eighteenth to the twentieth century), I also specialize in French regionalism in the twentieth century, the writings of Voltaire, and comparative historiographies.

    I would be interested to hear from potential research students with interests in:
    • French colonialism in the eighteenth century
    • Legacies of the French and British Empires
    • French regional history in the twentieth century
    • Francophone postcolonial literatures

    Current PhD projects supervised:
    Hugh Hiscock, ‘The Afterlives of Algeria in Contemporary France: Literary Narratives and Contested Spaces of Memory’ (funded by an AHRC NWCDTP studentship)
    Peter Buckles, 'The French Wars and their Impact on Merchant Trade Networks in Bristol, Bordeaux and New York, 1783–1830' (funded by an ESRC NWSSDTP studentship)

    Successfully defended PhD theses:
    Nicholas Bubak, ‘Hyper-Citizenship and the Experience of Youth in the Edwardian Scouting Movement’ (2017)
    Jack Webb, ‘Ideas About Haiti in the British Imagination, 1847–1904’ (funded by an AHRC studentship) (2016)
    Ian Gwinn, ‘“A Different Kind of History is Possible”: The History Workshop Movement and the Poetics and Politics of Everyday Life in British and German Historiography’ (funded by an AHRC studentship) (2015)
    Kathryn Dale, ‘French-Language Representations of India, 1870–1940’ (funded by an AHRC project studentship) (2012)
    Nicola Frith, ‘Competing Colonial Discourses in India: Representing the 1857 Kanpur Massacres in French and English-Language Texts and Images’ (2010)