Dr Richard Lesmoir-Gordon

The title of my doctoral thesis was 'War and Gender in Provincial France: the case of the Quercy and Armagnac regions of south-west France, 1940-44'. The thesis examined how the events and experiences of war had served to alter gendered identities, and how significant and long-lasting the changes were. It concluded that the war had a important impact in the context of the evolution of these identities over the 20th century, with respect both to the advancement of women in public life and to the further erosion of the masculine model of martial prowess.

Research Interests:

I am interested in how war changes identities, by subjecting individuals to extreme experiences, and by prompting extremes of action and emotion.  My postdoctoral research will consider how women who played active roles in the Second World War re-told their experiences to their children, and how the children's memories of those stories helped to shape their own attitudes towards gender, in particular as to the place of women in public life. The work will thus link the changes made by the Second World World with the attitudes and actions of the 'generation of 68'. It will cover both France and the United Kingdom. Like my doctoral thesis, it will be based primarily on oral history interviews, it will concentrate on a small number of individual cases and it will follow a microhistorical methodology.