In this month’s Feature Archive, Dr Arthur Asseraf (All Souls, Oxford), who works on foreign news in colonial Algeria in 1881-1940, discusses the Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer (ANOM) in Aix-en-Provence.  The Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer (ANOM, formerly known as CAOM) is the repository for the archives of the French state’s activities in its overseas possessions.  It is an […]

Antonia Wimbush (University of Birmingham) explores literature, gender and migration in the French postcolonial context. Here, she discusses the research she carried out in the Martinique, and in particular the Bibliothèque Schœlcher.  My doctoral thesis offers a re-conceptualisation of exile in the Francophone postcolonial context. It analyses autobiographical narratives published by four women writers from Algeria, […]

The Muséum national d’Histoire Naturelle provides one of the more relaxed research settings in Paris. Located in 5ème arrondissement in France’s national botanical garden – the Jardin des Plantes – the Muséum has its own central library that can be accessed either through the gardens themselves (free to stroll through) or directly off of Rue […]

  The Médiathèque Abdelmalek Sayad is a little known, under-utilised resource. It is housed in the Palais de la Porte Dorée, the former Musée des Colonies, built for the 1931 Colonial exhibition. This building is now home to the Musée Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration, opened in 2012. I used the médiathèque most recently to […]

In this month’s Feature Archive Section, Philippa Lewis (Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, University of Bristol) talks us through the process of researching at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. In a recent interview, the former president of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Bruno Racine, discussed the evolving nature of the library in the age of mass digitisation. The […]

In this month’s Feature Archive, Dan Callwood talks us through the Fonds Michel Chomarat at the Bibliothèque Municipale de Lyon.  Dan  is a PhD candidate in the school of history at Queen Mary University of London working on an AHRC-funded project provisionally entitled ‘Experiencing France’s gay liberation “moment” 1968-82’ supervised by Julian Jackson. The acceptance of LGBT […]

This month’s Feature Archive has been provided by Nick Livingstone who is currently working on two long-term, closely-linked projects: a history of the RAF’s Special Duties unit which flew the early clandestine operations for SIS and SOE, and some early intelligence circuits run by the British and the Free-French. This brief guide, based on several visits, is intended for anyone […]

In this month’s ‘Feature Archive’ section, Stewart McCain (St Mary’s University, Twickenham) talks us through the departmental archives of the Bouches du Rhône. Like a number of other regional archives, the departmental holdings of the Bouches du Rhône now find themselves in swanky new surroundings. These new surroundings, however, continue to reflect the historical developments […]

In the second of his posts on his work on the Italian Occupation of south-eastern France during the Second World War, Niall MacGalloway talks us through Italian Archives for French Historians.  To see more about Niall, go to his academia.edu page: https://st-andrews.academia.edu/NiallMacGalloway In an increasingly transnational world, and for those studying international history, greater numbers of […]

This month, Niall MacGalloway (St Andrews) talks us through the archives in and around Nice that he used during his work on the Italian occupation of south-eastern France during the Second World War. My work in the archives in the Alpes-Maritimes primarily concerned the Italian occupation during the Second World War, so I spent most of […]