Royal Holloway, University of London

Graduate Student, History

Thesis Title: "Historical narratives and European nationalisms: the cases of Germany and Ireland compared, c. 1840 to the inter-war period".

About

My PhD research is on comparative study of national historical narratives in Germany and Ireland, in relation to nationalism in each country, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (c. 1840 to the inter-war period). It is concerned with how historical narratives were used to give content to ideas of the "nation" in both cases as historical concept and frame of reference, and contemporary political and social ideal. In particular the thesis focuses on the construction of origins and foundational events, religion and the nation's history, "race" and the nation in history, and the historical construction of "national territory", in the national historical narratives under comparison.

Through this particular comparison I also hope to integrate the study of the intellectual history of Irish nationalism more deeply with that of "nationalism-in-general" across Europe, and through comparison of national historiographies in these two rather historically unconnected contexts, seek to determine common patterns in the formation of national(ist) historiographies and ideologies in modern Europe more generally.

In addition to my graduate studies I am a convenor for the new Royal Holloway Postgraduate Seminar (beginning October 2011), as well as a convenor for the graduate students/early career historians seminar in the history of political ideas (Seminar B) at the Institute of Historical Research of the University of London (commencing October 2011). I am also a member of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism, and I will contribute an entry to the CQ Press "Encyclopaedia of Modern Political Thought" on Joseph-Arthur de Gobineau (SAGE, forthcoming, 2012). I have given papers at the annual postgraduate conference of the German Historical Institute in London (January 2012), and the ASEN Annual Conference of March 2012.

I completed my BA at Royal Holloway, University of London, focusing on modern European history (2009), and my MA in the intercollegiate University of London course on the History of Political Thought and Intellectual History, again focusing on modern Europe (2010). I then went straight on to further graduate study, thanks to a College Research Scholarship provided by Royal Holloway, under the supervision of David Cesarani, Research Professor of History.