We are delighted to share the new webpage designed by the University Library Research Institute (ULRI), for the AHRC-funded doctoral award on France and the Second World War, a collaborative project of the Open University and Cambridge University Library.

The PhD candidate, Sophie Dubillot, previously contributed to this blog pieces on the French résistante Madeleine Riffaud and the collaborationist Auguste Liquois; the résistant priest Père Jacques de Jésus (who inspired Louis Malle’s 1987 film Au revoir les enfants) and Julien Unger’s Le sang et l’or : souvenirs de camps allemands (1946).

Sophie is using material from the Chadwyck-Healey Liberation Collection and the abundant press of the Liberation period to examine humorous drawings in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War in France (1944-46). Her project aims to examine visual humour’s forms, functions, and limits at a time when the French had to negotiate the delicate post-war transition back to peace. Sophie’s research focuses on how humour served to redefine the French nation in the early post-war period and how different influences on the drawings encouraged or stifled particular voices.

Irène Fabry-Tehranchi