Funding & Prizes

Initiative Fund - Previous winners

Islamophobia Beyond Borders, University of Aberdeen, July 2024   Diversity in French and Francophone Studies, Cambridge, 2023   Passages, UCD, May 2023   ‘Finding Community In and Beyond the Francosphère, Cambridge, January 2023   Tradition and Innovation in Franco-Belgian bande dessinée University of Leicester, March 2020   The Freak and its Discontents, Trinity College Dublin 2019   Chronicling the War, Re-imagining French-ness: Memoirs of the French external Resistance, University of Manchester, June 2019          

Visiting Scholars’ Seminar Series - Terms and Conditions

The Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France is delighted to announce its Visiting Scholars’ Seminar Series. In the light of its commitment to fostering collaboration between francophone and UK academics in its fields of interest, the Association offers funding to networks of members to support an annual seminar series of three or more thematically-related events, tenable in any UK or Irish university, or institution of higher education in the UK or Ireland, each of which will include a different francophone academic based in a francophone country alongside a member of the hosting department. The Association will also consider proposals which include professionals and practitioners working in fields relevant to the academic project. The scheme is designed to support the invitation of early- career and established scholars.
There is one deadline per year, 1 May, for activity taking place the following academic session.
Applicants will normally be notified of the outcome of their application within one month of the closing date.
Purpose of grant, criteria for selection and eligible costs.
The key objective of the Visiting Scholars’ Seminar Series grant is to encourage collaboration between UK and francophone academics in the fields of interest of the Association. The emphasis will be on collaboration and on the diffusion of skills and knowledge. Where a seminar series builds on existing collaboration, the applicants in the UK or Ireland should explain what the seminar series will achieve over and above past outcomes.

Visiting Scholars’ Seminar Series - Previous winners

Giving Shape to the World, 2023

ASMCF-SSFH Schools’ Liaison and Outreach Fund for French and French History - Terms and Conditions

Please click the link below to open the Terms and Conditions of the Outreach Prize

ASMCF-SSFH_T&C_November2024

ASMCF-SSFH Schools’ Liaison and Outreach Fund for French and French History - Previous winners

2024:  Daniel Gordon and Ludivine Broch, Edge Hill and Westminster Universities, French History and You report.   Previous Winners of the Former ASMCF Prize: 2019: Dr Dan Finch-Race, University of Bristol, report. Dr David Lees, University of Warwick, report Dearbhla McGrath, Challney High School for Boys in Luton. Dr Cristina Johnson, University of Stirling. 2018: Dr Fiona Barclay, University of Stirling, report.

Early Career Award - Terms and Conditions

Applicants must be members of the Association and may apply up to six years post viva.

Early Career Researchers – applying for the award should complete the application form, outlining their research project, the aims of their research trip and the anticipated budget for the proposed trip. Submissions should be made electronically by 15 July of the year in question to the Prizes Officer, Dr Jamie Steele.

A subcommittee convened to adjudicate the prize will look for evidence that the trip has been well planned and that the researcher has attempted to maximize the benefits to be drawn from the time in France.

The person to whom the prize has been awarded should provide a brief report on the trip, including details of expenses, no later than three months after return to the UK.

The winner of the prize will be announced at the ASMCF Annual Conference.

Early Career Award - Previous winners

2022: Elizabeth Benjamin (Coventry) Elizabeth Benjamin report 2021: Lida Amiri, University of Liverpool Lida Amiri report 2020: Benjamin Dalton, KCL. 2019: Ashley Scott-Harris, QUB, to fund research towards her monograph on Media Authorship, Gender, Fame and the écrivain médiatique in the contemporary French literary field. 2018: Barry Nevin, Dublin Institute of Technology, for a project entitled ‘The Social Cinema of Jacques Feyder: Framing family, class and colonialism in Interwar France (1919-39)’. 2017: Joanne Brueton (UCL) towards her postdoctoral project ‘The artistic arpenteur: textual and visual spaces of selfhood in twentieth century France’.

Postgraduate Essay Prize - Previous winners

2021: Cameron Cook (University of Minnesota), for his paper ‘Caribbean-ness and Political Engagement in French Rap Music’ 2019: Fraser McQueen, for an essay on the novels of Michel Houellebecq, the geographer Christophe Guilluy, and the Far Right in France. 2017: Dorthea Margery Fronsman-Cecil ‘Work, Play, Competition, and Capitalist Pedagogy in Nathalie Kuperman’s Nous étions des êtres vivants’ (UCLA). 2016: Emily St Denny, 'The gradual transformation of a weak but enduring regime: Contemporary French prostitution policy in transition (1946-2015)', (Nottingham Trent University) http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09639489.2017.1304902

Peter Morris Memorial Postgraduate Travel Prize - Terms and Conditions

Applications should be submitted in advance of the trip, which may take place at any time during the twelve months following the deadline for applications. Applicants to the prize should be members of the Association.

A subcommittee convened to adjudicate the prize will look for evidence that the trip has been well planned and that the student has attempted to maximize the benefits to be drawn from the time in France.

Each student shall be required to provide a letter of support from his or her supervisor. Bids to other funding bodies either pending or known should be disclosed.

The person to whom the prize has been awarded should provide a brief report on the trip, including details of expenses, no later than three months after return to the UK.

Peter Morris Memorial Postgraduate Travel Prize - Previous winners

2022: Solange Manche (University of Cambridge) Solange Manche report; Sarah Eichhorn (University of Nottingham) Sarah Eichhorn report 2020: Sky Herington (University of Warwick) Sky Herington report 2019: Hannah Loret-Howick (Nottingham Trent University) 2018: Helen Craske (University of Oxford) 2017:  Martin Parsons (Nottingham Trent University) 2016: Adam Spencer (University of Hull)

Brian Darling Memorial Prize - Terms and Conditions

Essays must explore one or more themes relevant to the Association’s remit (French history, politics, culture, society, literature, thought, film since 1789, as well as the relations between France and other countries, including those in the French-speaking world). The work may be written in either French or English and should not normally exceed five thousand words.
Essays or dissertations must be submitted by a member of academic staff (who should normally be a member of the Association) and accompanied with a current email address provided by the student. Submissions should be made electronically by 15 July of the year in question using the Application Form available on the ASMCF website. Submissions cannot be submitted by students.
A three-person sub-committee of the Executive will be invited to serve by the Secretary to consider the submissions and determine the award of the prize. Prize-winners shall be notified directly and their names announced on the website and at the Association’s AGM.

Brian Darling Memorial Prize - Previous winners

2021: Megan Lloyd, King’s College London, ‘Discuss the relationship of women to politics in Algeria as represented by these texts’. 2020: Alexandra Wootton, University of Leeds, ‘“Le Vietnam a constitué, pour toute une génération, la rampe d’accès à l’action militante”. Comment la guerre du Vietnam a-t-elle provoqué une radicalisation des étudiants en France?’. 2019: Araceli Irurzu, King’s College London, ‘Only violence can cure the scars of colonial violence’. 2018: Jordan McCullough, Queen's University Belfast, ‘The messianic metaphor and the redemption narrative in three twentieth-century Antillian texts’. 2017: Eilidh Ross, '"Et toute cette humanité de cauchemar vient se heurter et s’écraser contre la herse que nous avons laissé tomber dès le 28 janvier sur les seuils de notre frontière. Et derrière cette herse, il y a des fusils et des mitrailleuses, qui sont les attributs de notre force et les moyens légitimes de notre sauvegarde [...] Mais, devant les mitrailleuses, entre elles et l’imploration de ces faces de peur et de détresse, il y a le visage calme, doux et grave de la France, de la France de saint Vincent-de-Paul et des Droits de l’homme, qui est la même depuis toujours, à travers les âges comme à travers le monde." Discuss the validity of this statement, made by Albert Sarraut in March 1939, with reference to the Spanish exodus.' 2016: Liam Innis, University of Newcastle, "Discuss how Flora Tristan blazed a trail among utopian socialists in her treatment of 'the woman question'" 2015: Julia Dobson, University of Warwick, 'Analyse and evaluate the success of the GIP's resistance to techniques of coercive governance both at home and abroad' and Danielle Hayter, University of Portsmouth, 'How and why has the contribution of African soldiers to the French war effort during the Second World War been remembered in France and Senegal since the mid-1990s?' 2014: Han Jie Chow, University of Bangor, 'Langue et identité culturelle à la Martinique' 2013: H. Silver, University of Birmingham. 2011: Charley Jarrett, University of Sussex, for ‘L'exception electorale française’.

Douglas Johnson Memorial Essay Prize - Terms and Conditions

Essays must explore one or more themes relevant to the Association’s remit (French history, politics, culture, society, literature, thought, film since 1789, as well as the relations between France and other countries, including those in the French-speaking world). The work may be written in either French or English and should be over five thousand words, but not exceed ten thousand words.
Essays or dissertations must be submitted by a member of academic staff (who should normally be a member of the Association) and accompanied with a current email address provided by the student. Submissions should be made electronically by 15 July of the year in question using the Application Form available on the ASMCF website. Submissions cannot be submitted by students.
A three-person sub-committee of the Executive will be invited to serve by the Secretary to consider the submissions and determine the award of the prize. Prize-winners shall be notified directly and their names announced on the website and at the Association’s AGM.

Douglas Johnson Memorial Essay Prize - Previous winners

2021: Millie Jacoby, University of Warwick, ‘The Body as physical site of trauma in Francophone Jewish Women’s Post-Holocaust Writing’. 2020: Izabela Bester, University of Surrey, ‘Le mouvement des gilets jaunes : une analyse stratégique’. 2019: Jessica Phillip James, Coventry University, ‘Camus and Godard: An Analysis of the Representation of Absurdist Philosophy in Dramatic and Literary Movements in Post-War France’. 2018: Dora Baker, University of Bristol, 'Les femmes tondues: victims of an emasculated France'. 2017: Fraser McRobert, University of Glasgow, 'The Former Concentration Camp of Natzweiler-Struth of as a Place of Memory'. 2015: Liam Jones, University of Portsmouth, 'Mitterrand, Kohl and the quest for EMU: an awkward inheritance or a visionary endeavour? An analysis of the motives behind increased Franco-German economic integration in Europe from 1982-1995 and its consequences'. 2014: Sally Jensen, University of Southampton 'Fighting in France: the struggles of identity adaptation and liminality for Chinese students in Paris'. 2013: Christopher Leffler, University of Sheffield. 2011 The 2011 Douglas Johnson Prize was awarded to Philippe Le Goff, University of Warwick, for his essay 'May 1968: socio-economic modernism and the new spirit of capitalism'.