Nicola Frith (AHRC Leadership Fellow (2013-15) and AHRC Research Networking Grant (2017-19))

Senior Lecturer

  • French and Francophone Studies
  • Department of European Languages and Cultures
  • School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures

Contact details

Address

Street

Room 3.52
50 George Square

City
Edinburgh
Post code
EH8 9LH

Availability

  • Please note that I work part-time on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursday. My office hours are 14:00-15:00 on Wednesdays.

Biography

Background

Nicola Frith completed her doctorate at the University of Liverpool in 2010. She worked at Bangor University in Wales as a Lecturer in French from 2010 to 2014, before joining French and Francophone Studies at the University of Edinburgh as a Chancellor’s Fellow in September 2014. She held an AHRC early career Leadership Fellowship (2013–15) for a project entitled ‘Mapping Memories of Slavery: Commemoration, Community and Identity in Contemporary France’. In the 2014, she published her first monograph entitled The French Colonial Imagination: Writing the Indian Uprisings, 1857-1858, from Second Empire to Third Republic in the After the Empire series with Lexington Books. In addition to writing about the construction of French colonial identities during the nineteenth century, Frith is the author of numerous chapters and articles in peer-reviewed journals relating to the politics of memories of slavery and the need for reparative justice. In 2017, she was awarded a second AHRC grant to set up the International Network of Scholars and Activists for Afrikan Reparations (INOSAAR) in collaboration with Professor Joyce Hope Scott (Boston University). Her work is dedicated to challenging the socio-political myths that surround the concept of reparations, specifically where the European-led enslavement and trafficking in Afrikan peoples is concerned.

Undergraduate teaching

  • FR1B: French Literature and Civilisation 

  • ELCF08010: Politics and Institutions of Contemporary France

  • ELCF10075: Recognition Struggles in Contemporary France

Open to PhD supervision enquiries?

Yes

Areas of interest for supervision

I welcome enquiries from any candidate interested in exploring the history, politics and/or cultural afterlives of empire, colonialism and enslavement with a particular focus on French and francophone societies. 

Current PhD students supervised

Currently supervising one PhD student, Ellen Davis-Walker, and one Masters by Research student, Chris Jardine.

Past PhD students supervised

Géraldine Crahay (Bangor University)

Stephanie Bostock (Bangor University)

Research summary

Francophone postcolonial studies; memory studies; nineteenth- and twentieth-century colonial history; community and belonging in contemporary French society; memories of enslavement; the politics of memory; justice and reparations; museology and commemorative practices.

 

Project activity

My research investigates the work of Francophone activist organizations that are engaging with the legacies of slavery in the present day. Since 2014, I began to focus more closely on the important question of reparations for Afrikan enslavement. Developing out of my work in postcolonial and memory studies, this research has been awarded two external AHRC grants.

From 2013-15, I held an AHRC early career Leadership Fellowship for a project entitled ‘Mapping Memories of Slavery: Commemoration, Community and Identity in Contemporary France’. This project has mapped activist networks within the French Republic and foregrounds the complex and creative responses of citizen groups as they engage culturally and politically with the afterlives of the history of slavery. It has resulted in a public report and website entitled 'Cartographie des Mémoires de l'Esclavage' (https://www.mmoe.llc.ed.ac.uk), as well as book chapters, an edited collection and several journal articles.

Since 2017, I have held an AHRC Research Networking grant entitled 'Reparations for Slavery: From Theory to Praxis' in collaboration with Professor Joyce Hope Scott (Boston University). This project is dedicated to challenging the socio-political myths that surround the concept of reparations, specifically where the European-led enslavement and trafficking in Afrikan peoples is concerned. In addition to publications, this has resulted in the co-founding of the International Network of Scholars and Activists for Afrikan Reparations (INOSAAR) (https://www.inosaar.llc.ed.ac.uk).

Current project grants

AHRC Research Networking grant (2017-19): 'Reparations for Slavery: From Theory to Praxis'.

Past project grants

AHRC Leadership Fellowship (2013-15): ‘Mapping Memories of Slavery: Commemoration, Community and Identity in Contemporary France’.

View all 20 publications on Research Explorer

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