Dr Fiona Barclay

After completing my first degree in French at the University of Glasgow, I gained an MSc in Marketing from the University of Strathclyde and worked for a number of years at the headquarters of a FTSE50 company, before returning to academia. I completed my PhD at the University of Glasgow, and came to Stirling in 2007.

My research interests lie in two distinct areas. As a scholar of French Studies, I am interested in the aspects of postcolonial France which have emerged from France’s history in North Africa, and how these have been represented in literature and film. My work approaches the Mediterranean basin as a single transnational space marked by cultural exchanges and physical, colonial and postcolonial migration, which continues to be shaped by the traces of shared histories, and by individual and collective narratives of memory and identification. Areas of interest include:

• Memory, trauma, and commemoration; 
• Pied-noir history, myths, literature and film; 
• Ghosts and the haunting traces of the colonial period; 
• Contemporary exoticism and orientalism; 
• Postcolonial feminism. 

I have published widely on the role of memory in French literary and cinematic representations of Algeria. My first monograph, Writing Postcolonial France, interrogates the ongoing process of decolonisation, and proposes that France – which since de Gaulle has frequently regarded itself as having turned the page of empire – has failed to come to terms with the end of its empire and is now haunted by the legacy of its colonial relationship with North Africa, and the ghostly traces which it has left on contemporary society. It examines the form assumed by the ghosts of the past in fiction from a range of genres (travel writing, detective fiction, life writing, historical fiction, women's writing) produced within metropolitan France. By viewing metropolitan France through the prism of its relationship with its former colonies in North Africa, the book maps the complexities of contemporary France as a postcolonial nation.    I was awarded an AHRC early career Leadership Fellowship (£250,000; 2018-2022) for a project entitled 'From colonisers to refugees: narratives and representations of the French settlers of Algeria'. It situates the 1962 repatriation of around a million European settlers, known as pieds-noirs, to France in the wider context of contemporary European and Mediterranean forced migrations, and examines the resulting implications for French society, culture, politics and identity. You can find out about the project at our website: https://www.pieds-noirs.stir.ac.uk/

In 2022 I was awarded AHRC funding for Impact and Engagement (£100,000; 2022-23) for 'Remembering Empire', a project focused on supporting the development of global citizenship through French resources sharing memories of colonial Algeria with secondary school learners. I am currently the PI on the Scottish Government-funded project 'Migration and Empire: Teaching the Impact of Scots Settlers' (£50,000; 2024-25) which brings together academics and teachers to improve the resources and approach to how the impact of Scots settlers in Canada, New Zealand and Australia is taught in secondary schools.

'Remembering Empire' led me into a new area of language policy and advocacy. Working with SCILT, Scotland's National Centre for Languages, I have received funding from the British Academy to investigate the gender gap in language-learning, and from the Scottish Graduate School of Arts and Humanities to supervise doctoral research evaluating the Scottish Government's 1+2 policy. I'm particularly interested in comparative analyses of language-learning in Anglophone countries.

My doctoral supervisees include Fraser McQueen (Immigration, race and religion in contemporary France, funded by the AHRC), Dyhia Bia (The politics and aesthetics of post-independence African literature and theatre) and David Vescio (An evaluation of the Scottish Government's 1+2 languages policy, funded by the AHRC).

Enquiries from prospective PhD students are warmly welcomed.

From 2010-2024 I served on the Executive Committee of the Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France, latterly as Honorary Secretary, and am a member of the Editorial Board of the Taylor & Francis journal, Modern & Contemporary France.

From 2024 I am the Chair of the University Council for Languages Scotland (UCFLS).

Postcolonial France; North Africa; contemporary French literature and film; pieds-noirs; history and memory; migration; language policy.

I teach across modules in French language and culture at all levels. I offer three Honours specialism modules, on Remembering Empire (FREU9RE); French and Francophone Cultures of Travel (FREU9CT); and French and Francophone Women's Writing and Films (FREU9WW). Not all Honours modules run every year.