As a scholar in partnership with another scholar of the Laidlaw 2024 cohort, I will work on identifying men and women from French North Africa, who fought in the French Internal Resistance (1940-1945) in Paris. I will be trained in the research methodology needed to gather information from a range of French state online databases, military archival files photographed by the supervisor on previous research trips and official written histories to find such individuals and to research the role they played. I will also use a range of web databases to find out about their life pre- and post-war (employment, political affiliations, place of residence).  

Part of this first research period will be spent working in the French military archives in Paris. While also exploring the locations where the men and women who fought in the French Internal Resistance lived in. Following the return to Leeds, I will work with the supervisor to use mapping tools and other visual and audio aids to think about how best to present these colonial resistance fighters’ lives to the general public, especially school students.  How can we make their stories come alive and resonate 80 years on? This will be our focus and aim.