Nicola Frith (AHRC Leadership Fellow (2013-15), AHRC Research Networking Grant (2017-19), AHRC Follow-On Funding for Impact and Engagement (2021-23))

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 2-3pm on Thursdays.

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 has held three AHRC grants, beginning with 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 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), Esther Stanford-Xosei and Kofi Mawuli Klu (co-founders of the Pan-Afrikan Reparations Coalition in Europe, PARCOE). In 2021, she was awarded an AHRC Follow-On Funding for Impact and Engagement, entitled 'Rethinking Reparations for African Enslavement as Cultural, Spiritual and Environmental Repair'.

Frith is the author of numerous chapters and articles in peer-reviewed journals relating to the politics of memory, social movements and recognition struggles dedicated to remembering slavery and understanding the need for reparative justice for African enslavement. As a reparations advocate, her work is dedicated to understanding the structural legacies of slavery and colonialism, the continuity of coloniality and in seeking reparatory justice solutions.

Responsibilities & affiliations

Co-Chair of the Research and Engagement Working Group (REWG) for a University-wide project entitled, 'Decolonised Transformations: Confronting the UoE's Legacies of Slavery and Colonialism'

Undergraduate teaching

  • FR1B: French Literature and Civilisation 

  • ELCF08010: Politics and Institutions of Contemporary France

  • ELCF10075: Recognition Struggles in Contemporary France

  • ELCC08009: Migration, Diaspora and Exile

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, reparations, reparatory justice and social movements/recognition struggles.

Past PhD students supervised

Géraldine Crahay (Bangor University)

Stephanie Bostock (Bangor University)

Ellen Davis-Walker (University of Edinburgh)

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.

 

Current research interests

Reparations and reparatory justice for African enslavement. Social movements and recognition struggles linked reparations and memories of slavery.

Project activity

My research investigates the work of activist organizations that are engaging with the legacies of slavery in the present day and the question of reparations for African enslavement. Developing out of my work in postcolonial and memory studies, this research has been awarded three AHRC grants to-date and has generated an impact case study.

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 mapped activist networks within the French Republic and foregrounded the complex and creative responses of citizen groups as they engage culturally and politically with the afterlives of the history of slavery. It resulted in a public report and website entitled 'Cartographie des Mémoires de l'Esclavage' (https://www.mmoe.llc.ed.ac.uk), book chapters, an edited collection and several journal articles. My single-authored monograph entitled Legacies of Slavery in the French Republic: Politics, Activism, Reparation will be coming out with Liverpool University Press in 2024.

From 2017-19, I held an AHRC Research Networking grant entitled 'Reparations for Slavery: From Theory to Praxis' in collaboration with Professor Joyce Hope Scott (Boston University) and reparationists Esther Stanford-Xosei and Kofi Muwali Klu (co-founders of the Pan-Afrikan Reparations Coalition in Europe, PARCOE). This project was 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) and the publication of a report (https://www.inosaar.llc.ed.ac.uk/en/global-report-2019) in 2019.

From 2021-23, I held an AHRC Follow-On Funding for Impact and Engagement grant for a project entitled 'Rethinking Reparations for African Enslavement as Cultural, Spiritual and Environmental Repair'. Through a series of knowledge exchange and public engagement activities - including the production of a film-documentary called 'Doors of Return' (in Benin, West Africa) and a workshop series (in Ghana, West Africa) - this project has been showcasing two emerging concepts of relevance to reparations' activists located across the world. The first engages with the long-term effects on the African Diaspora of the loss of culture and identity resulting from European-led enslavement, and the process of cultural and spiritual return to the African continent; known as 'rematriation'. The second relates the ways in which struggles for reparative justice are underpinned by the need for 'planet repairs' and the important role that African systems of knowledge, including its cultures and spiritualities, can play in diversifying ecologically-focused social movements. 

Past project grants

AHRC Leadership Fellowship (2013-15): ‘Mapping Memories of Slavery: Commemoration, Community and Identity in Contemporary France’.
AHRC Research Networking grant (2017-19): 'Reparations for Slavery: From Theory to Praxis'.
AHRC Follow-On Funding for Impact and Engagement (2021-23): 'Rethinking Reparations for African Enslavement as Cultural, Spiritual and Environmental Repair'.

View all 20 publications on Research Explorer

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