The Laurie M. Wood Research Travel Award

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Next Award Deadline: 1 January 2025

The Society for French Historical Studies and the Western Society for French History offer an annual award of $2,000 for research conducted outside North America on any aspect of the history of France. This award is granted to an outstanding American or Canadian scholar who has received the doctorate in history in the five-year period prior to the award (since January 2020 for the 2025 award). The award must be spent no more than one year after the fellowship is awarded. 

The winners will be announced at the annual meeting of the Society for French Historical Studies. The award may not be shared. Please direct inquiries to the chair of the committee.


To apply: please submit the following as email attachments (word or PDF) to the chair of the committee:

1. Project Proposal: In no more than two pages (single-spaced), the applicant should outline the nature and scope of the project and the archives and libraries to be consulted;
2. Current Curriculum Vitae.

Letters of recommendation are not required for this award.

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Committee Members:

Kathleen Wellman (2025) (chair)

Clements Department of History
Southern Methodist University
Dallas Hall
3225 University
Dallas, TX 75205 (USA)
kwellman@smu.edu

Allan Tulchin (2026)

Department of History and Philosophy
Shippensburg University
1871 Old Main Dr.
Shippensburg, PA 17257
aatulchin@ship.edu

Kelly Colvin (2026, WSFH representative)

Department of History
UMass Boston
McCormack Hall
100 Morrissey Blvd.
Boston, MA 02125-3393
Kelly.Colvin@umb.edu

Kathleen Kete (2027)

Department of History
Trinity College
Seabury Hall N-401
300 Summit Street, Hartford CT 06106

kathleen.kete@trincoll.edu

Donate to the Research Travel Award

2024 WINNER

Winner:  Merve Fejzula, “Negritude and the Afro-Black Public Sphere 1947-77”

The SFHS/WSFH Awards committee is delighted to award Dr. Merve Fejzula the Laurie Wood Travel Award for 2024. It will enable Dr. Fezjula to complete the research for her first book, currently entitled Negritude and the Afro-Black Public Sphere 1947-77. Dr. Fejzula’s work promises to provide a new intellectual history of negritude alongside a novel political economy of the Black public sphere. Dr Fejzula’s clear research plan and her innovative work promises to make a major intervention in the field. Her multi-sited global portrait of negritude and the Afro-Black public sphere continues in the spirit of Prof. Laurie Wood’s global and personal approach to the Francophone world. We wish her well as she completes the vital research for her book - now under contract.

Past Winners:

2022:
Sarah Runcie,
Muhlenberg College, “Doctors with Borders: Decolonization and International Health in Cameroon.”

2021:
Kelly Presutti,
Cornell University, “‘Agglomerations’: Accretive History in New Caledonia.”

2020:
Megan Brown, Swarthmore College, “Racing Against Decolonization: The Rallye Méditerranée-Le Cap and the Infrastructures of Empire.”

2019:
Ian W. Merkel
, Post-doctoral Fellow at the University of Turin, “Terms of Exchange: Brazilian Intellectuals and the Rethinking of the French Social Sciences.”

2018:
Miranda Sachs, Yale University, "Child’s Work: Welfare, Family, and Work in Third Republic France."

2017:
Nimisha Barton
Princeton University, "Reproductive Citizens: Gender, Immigration, and the State in Modern France."

2016: 
Bronwen McSheaColumbia University, "Patroness of Empire: Duchesse Marie d’Aiguillon and French-Catholic Expansion in 17th-Century Asia, America, and Africa."

2015: 
Laurie M. WoodFlorida State University, "Archipelago of Justice: Law in France’s Early Modern Empire."

2014: 
Burleigh Hendrickson
Northeastern University, "Imperial Fragments and Transnational Activism: 1968(s) in Tunisia, France, and Senegal."

2013: 
Elena NapolitanoUniversity of Toronto, "Prospects of Statecraft: Diplomacy, Territoriality, and the Vision of French Nationhood in Rome, 1660-1700."

2012
Alexia YatesHarvard University, "Selling Paris: Real Estate and Commercial Culture in the Fin-de-siècle Metropolis."

2011:
Christina FirpoCalifornia Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, "'Abandoned Children': The Crises of Racial Patriarchy and the Forcible Removal of Mixed-Race Children in Colonial Indochina, 1890-1956."

2010:
Jennifer PalmerUniversity of Chicago, "An Ocean between Them: Race, Gender and the Family in France and Its Colonies."

2009:
Jonathyne BriggsIndiana University Northwest, "Anarchie en France: Hypermodernity and French Popular Music, 1958-1981."

2008:
Claire SalinasColorado College,"Settling Society in France and Algeria: Emigration, Colonization, and Liberal Politics, 1830-1870."

2007:
Junko TankedaSyracuse University, "Between France and the Mediterranean: Absolutism and Commercial Humanism in Marseille, 1660-1720."

2006:
Rebecca PuljuKent State University, "The Woman's Paradise: Gender and Consumer Culture in France, 1944-1965."

2005:
Sara BeamUniversity of Victoria, "The Body of the Criminal in Europe, 1500 - 1750."

2004:
Richard KeyserWestern Kentucky University, "From Gift to Contract: The Transformation of Medieval Property Dealings, Champagne 1100-1350."

2003:
Richard C. KellerUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison, "Developing Madness: The Psychiatrist's Civilizing Mission in French North Africa, 1900-1962."

2002:
Sean KennedyUniversity of New Brunswick, "The Croix de Feu and the Parti Social Français in Algeria."

2001:
Nancy LocklinMaryville College, "Women in Early Modern Brittany: Rethinking Work and Identity in a Traditional Economy."

2000:
Patrick R. YoungFordham University, "The Consumer as National Subject: Bourgeois Tourism in the French Third Republic, 1880-1914."

1999:
Michael LynnAgnes Scott College, "Popular Science in the French Enlightenment: The Dissemination of Natural Philosophy and the Creation of an Urban Scientific Culture."

1998:
Nancy EdwardsBowdoin College, "Regendering the Nation: the Role of the Housewife in French Indentity Formation from 1918 to Vichy."

1997:
Mathew S. KueflerRice University, "A Study of the Manuscripts of the Vita Sancti Geraldi Aureliancensis."