Dr John Strachan

Research Interests

I studied and taught at the universities of Warwick (1997-2002) and Manchester (2002-2007) before joining Lancaster in September 2007. I serve on the steering committee of the Society for the Study of French History and am a core member and formerly research events co-ordinator (2008-2012) for the Dynamics of Memories research group (recently awarded a major AHRC Networking Grant).

I started out as a social and cultural historian of late nineteenth-century France, especially interested in local, regional and national identities, and in Eugen Weber's ideas about the coming-together of the modern nation-state. I then began to develop an interest in France's overseas empire in North Africa which I had encountered in the writings of Albert Camus and Fernand Braudel. These interests came together in my doctorate - a history of the pieds-noirs (European settlers in Algeria) that explored the role of the military, political and  commemorative cultures, literature, education, medicine, food and drink, and the writing of  history in the period 1870-1930. The work of Roland Barthes and Pierre Nora served me well in developing a broad analytical framework for the study of cultural and psychological relationships between metropolitan and colonial worlds. Much of this research has been published in article form (see below).  More recently, I have worked on the relationship of memory to history, colonial cultures in a comparative context, and the intellectual history of decolonisation. In addition to writing up a monograph on colonial Algeria, I am currently beginning new projects on the commemoration of imperial heroes, the colonial origins of  anthropology, and the place of sub-Saharan Africa in Western thought.

Current Research

Mythologies of Empire: The Shape of Culture in European Colonial Algeria (book manuscript, in preparation).

A co-authored special issue on the commemoration of imperial heroes.

Current Teaching

I am on sabbatical leave in the 2012-2013 academic year and will not be teaching. I normally contribute to HIST100, HIST300 and HIST405 and convene the following undergraduate modules:

HIST272 Empire, Race, and the French Colonial World

HIST244 A History of Paris

HIST356 La nouvelle histoire

I hold the Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice and am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Additional Information

I would like to hear from postgraduate students and potential postgraduates interested in the following areas:

Social, cultural and intellectual histories of modern France and the French overseas empire

Imperialism, colonialism and race

Historiography (especially French) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

• Dr John Strachan delivers keynote address at conference on Albert Camus

  25/04/2013
  Dr John Strachan will deliver a keynote address at the conference 'Camus and Beyond: Literature, Philosophy and the Political' at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, Ireland on 26 April 2013. ... Read more»

• Harvard / M.I.T. roundtable on Albert Camus

  11/02/2013
  Dr John Strachan will speak about meanings of poverty in the work of Albert Camus as part of a roundtable, "Camus at 100", to be held at the Society for French Historical Studies annual meeting at Har ... Read more»

• Visiting Scholarship, Tulane University, New Orleans

  01/09/2012
  Dr John Strachan will spend Lent Term 2012-2013 as a visiting scholar at Tulane University, New Orleans. In addition to writing up a monograph on colonial Algeria, Dr Strachan will continue his resear ... Read more»

• The Organiser and the Victim: Power Relationships in the Colonial World

  01/12/2010
  The Organiser and the Victim, a colloquium on 'poor whites' and power relationships in the colonial world, will take place at Keele University on 15 January 2011. The event is co-organised by Dr John ... Read more»

• John Strachan publishes essay on Albert Camus

  05/11/2010
  John Strachan's essay on the colonial childhood of Nobel Prize-winning author Albert Camus, 'Between History, Memory and Mythology: The Algerian Education of Albert Camus', will appear in France's Los ... Read more»