Talitha Ilacqua is a PhD student in History at King’s College London. Her research focuses on local and national identities in the French Basque country between 1780 and 1860. Here she writes about using the Archives départmentales of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques in Bayonne.

Ryan Lenzmeier is an MA student at North Carolina State University, working on tobacco consumption, taxation, and smuggling in Northern France in the 18th Century. Here he writes about using the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Camille Mahé is a PhD student at Sciences Po Paris and the University of Warwick, working on children’s experiences of the post-war period in Western Europe. Here she talks about the archives available at the Mémorial de Caen in Normandy.

Vanessa Wright is a PhD student at the University of Leeds, and works on cross-dressing in medieval French literature. Here she talks about her research at the Bibliothèque royale de Belgique.

On Monday 11 December, Matthew Shaw, the librarian of the Institute of Historical Research, will be delivering a talk after lunch on the Library’s francophone collections at Senate House Library and then leading a tour of the IHR library from 14.00-16.00 (followed by optional tea in the IHR Common Room). There are still 3 spaces …

Laura Boyd is a PhD Student at the University of Leeds working on representations of enlisted non-combatants in the British and French Armies during the Great War. Here she talks about working with First World War Archives at the BNF.

Michael Joseph (University of Oxford) works on the political legacy of the First World War in the French and British Caribbean. Here he discusses the Archives départementales de la Guadeloupe

David Nicoll (University of Warwick) works on Protestant noble identity during the Wars of Religion in France. Here, he discusses his research at the Richelieu-Louvois site of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.

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, …