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.

Prior to 2023, this award was known as the Research Travel Award.


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.

French Travel Award.jpg

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

2025 WINNER

Winner:  Jon Paul Heyne, “Pawns Moving Kings: Franciscans in the Holy Land c. 1291-1517”

In his intriguing research proposal, Jon Paul Heyne sets out his plan to follow some of the archival traces of a handful of Christian men and women, Franciscan friars and laywomen, who successfully reclaimed land in the Islamic Levant and established the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land. Custody sought and gained the attention of many rulers across the Mediterranean. Unexpectedly, these few and relatively insignificant religious figures had a political and diplomatic impact because the Custody “offered every advantage and frustration of a well- placed pawn,” as he puts it. Because the Custody could offer a ruler an advantage over a rival, it was also vulnerable to his or her changing political interests. The Laurie Wood Fellowship will allow Jon Paul to consult archives in Lille and Marseilles to determine the interactions of Joanna, Queen of Naples, and Philip, Duke of Burgundy, with these intriguing figures.

Past Winners:

2024:
Merve Fejzula,
University of Missouri, “Negritude and the Afro-Black Public Sphere 1947-77”

2023:
Abigail Lewis,
University of Notre Dame, “Double Exposure: French Photography and Everyday Choices from Nazi Occupation to Liberation”

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."