Nina Wardleworth

I completed a BA (Hons) in French and Arabic at the University of Exeter in 2001. I then studied for my PhD (Exeter, 2006) on Cultural Representations of the Harkis part-time while TEFL teaching in Paris. Between 2006 and 2009, I was the Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the major AHRC funded FRAME project into Narratives of the Second World War and Occupation in France 1939-2009, based at the University of Leeds. After a year-long teaching fellowship at Leeds, I was appointed as Lecturer in French at the University of Chester in 2010. After taking a career break to look after my daughter full-time I returned to Leeds as a part-time lecturer in 2013.

Current Research Project

Colonial subjects in the French Resistance – commemoration and memory.

Although there has been an increasing amount of research on the role played by colonial soldiers in the Free French Army and the Provence landings and subsequent liberation of France, the presence of colonial subjects in the French Resistance remains marginalised. Initial research has revealed that there were at least 5,000 colonial resistance fighters in groups throughout France.

My research examines the memory of this contribution at a national and local level in France and in cultural depictions (graphic novels, films and novels).

I blog on this topic at www.frenchempireww2.wordpress.com