Dr Simon Jackson

• BA University of Oxford
• MA NYU
• PhD NYU

I am a historian of modern France and its colonial empire and an Assistant Professor in the History Dept. at the University of Birmingham, where in 2014-17 I held a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship. I have also held Max Weber and Jean Monnet Post-Doctoral Fellowships in History at the European University Institute in Florence. I earned a PhD in Modern History from NYU and a BA in Modern History from Oxford University.

At undergraduate level I convene the introductory modules 'Practising History A & B', and contribute teaching in the module 'History in Theory and Practice'. I also teach a Group Research module titled 'Race, Nation, Economy: French Empire from 1789 to Decolonisation'.

I currently co-teach the two modules of the MA History programme : ‘Mass Society and Modernity’ and ‘Globalization since 1945’.

I offer postgraduate supervision in the colonial, international and global history of modern France and its empire, on empire in the twentieth century Mediterranean and in the comparative history of European empire.

I currently supervise or co-supervise several PhD students:

Gemma Jennings (Patriarchy and Poverty? A Transnational Analysis of the Social Implications of the Oil Industry between France and Algeria)
Tomoki Yamada (The League of Nations Mandates System as a Trans-imperial Arena of (Anti-)Colonialism)
Eliana Hadjisavvas (Jewish displacement at the end of the Second World War and the internment of Jewish refugees in British-run camps in colonial Cyprus)
Mustafa Coban (Turkish Foreign Policy on its Borders: The Balkan and Saadabad Pacts and their Domestic Determinants, 1934-1941)

Find out more - our PhD History  page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

My research focus is on modern France and its colonial empire in the Middle East and the Mediterranean, from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries.

More broadly, I'm interested in the political-economy of colonial empire at large - the ways that power hierarchies interact with economic life, from local contexts to global ones. My approach has often emphasised the impact of war on economic life, and, drawing on cultural history methods, the ways that people imagine possible economic futures in contexts of crisis.

To date I have worked on imperial economic development in the French League of Nations Mandate in Syria and Lebanon, on the history of Fordism in the post-Ottoman Middle East, and on the global history of colonial commodities and natural resources.

My next project is a global and imperial history of North African phosphate, showing how imperial mineral extraction influenced the emergence of modern global food production regimes.

I direct the Centre for Modern and Contemporary History and convene its seminar series. I also convene the MA in Contemporary History at the University of Birmingham and co-convene the Institute for Historical Research seminar on Rethinking Modern Europe. I am the co-ordinator of the British Academy's Commodities of Empire research network.

For full details see my website at www.simon-jackson.eu