Emile Chabal : Home

Emile was educated at Cambridge, Rice University, Harvard University and the École Normale Supérieure, Paris. He completed his PhD at Cambridge and his thesis was subsequently awarded the History Faculty's Prince Consort and Thirlwall Prize, and Seeley Medal for the best dissertation across all periods. In 2011, he took up a position as Departmental Lecturer in Modern European History in the Faculty of History and Balliol College, Oxford. He returned to Cambridge in 2012 as a Research Fellow in French Political History at St John's College.

Emile's research has, for the most part, touched on three main areas: the transformation of French politics since the 1970s, Franco-British relations in the 20th century and the legacy of postcolonialism in France. This has resulted in a number of publications on the 'Anglo-Saxon' in modern French thought, and contemporary French conceptions of the nation, the citizen and the secular. He is also interested in political counter-narratives that have endeavoured to alter or contest this emerging vision of the French nation. These have included attempts to rewrite modern French history and, at various points, bring to the fore languages of multiculturalism, postcolonialism and economic liberalism.

More broadly, Emile wants to develop new ways of understanding political consensus and political language, both in the context of modern French history and in post-Communist Western Europe as a whole. His future research plans include smaller projects on late twentieth century (neo-)liberalism and local politics in the Languedoc, as well as a larger project on languages of protest and the ways in which the French contest the authority of the state. In the long term, he hopes to show how the tension between protest and consensus has come to define contemporary European politics.

Emile's other great passion is music. He holds an LRSM performing diploma on the classical guitar and, for many years, taught the instrument to unsuspecting students of all ages.