Dr Marie-Cecile Thoral BA (Hons), MA (DEA), PhD
Senior Lecturer in Modern European History
Summary
I joined Sheffield Hallam in October 2010 after having been a temporary lecturer in France, at the University of Grenoble (2004-2006), a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of York (2006-2008) and a senior lecturer in modern history at the University of Coventry (2008-2010).
About
I defended my PhD in France, at the University of Grenoble, in December 2004, on 'local government and the limits of Napoleonic centralization in 19th century provincial France: the case of the Isère, 1800-1837'. I also passed the French concours of the external Agrégation of History (1999).
Specialist areas of interest
French history during the 'long' 19th century (from the French Revolution to the First World War)
History of local government and governance
History of war (Napoleonic wars, colonial warfare in Algeria)
Imperial history (France and North Africa: Napoleonic Egypt, colonial Algeria and Tunisia)
Environmental history and history of medicine
History of textile and dress
Teaching
Department of Humanities
College of Social Sciences and Arts
Research
Just beginning a new research on cross-cultural interactions between France and two of its former colonies in North Africa, Algeria and Tunisia, during the 'long' 19th century, focusing on colonial warfare, and on social, cultural and economic interactions in the fields of medicine and pharmacy, textile and dress, and the environment.
Research supported by the Pasold Research Fund on cross cultural dressing in colonial Algeria and Tunisia during the long 19th century.
Collaboration with the Fondation Napoléon (in Paris) for a collective volume on state-building in Napoleonic Europe and an international conference on Waterloo.
Publications
Journal articles
Thoral, M.-.C. (2015). Sartorial Orientalism: cross-cultural dressing in Colonial Algeria and metropolitan France in the Nineteenth Century. European History Quarterly, 45 (1), 57-82. http://doi.org/10.1177/0265691414556060
Thoral, M.-.C. (2015). French Colonial Counter-Insurgency: General Bugeaud and the Conquest of Algeria, 1840-47. British Journal of Military History, 1 (2), 8-27. http://bjmh.gold.ac.uk/article/view/608
Thoral, M.-.C. (2012). Colonial medical encounters in the nineteenth century : the French campaigns in Egypt, Saint Domingue and Algeria. Social History of Medicine, 25 (3), 608-624. http://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hks020
Book chapters
Thoral, M.-.C. (2012). Napoleon's Egyptian campaign and Nineteenth-Century orientalism : perceptions and memories in autobiographical accounts and novels. In Forrest, A., Étienne, F., & Hagemann, K. (Eds.) War memories : the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars in modern European culture. (pp. 114-136). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
Books
Thoral, M.-.C. (2011). From Valmy to Waterloo : France at war, 1792-1815. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Thoral, M.-.C. (2010). L'émergence du pouvoir local : le département de l'Isère face à la centralisation (1800-1837). Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes.