Christina de Bellaigue

Christina de Bellaigue is a Jackson Fellow and Tutor in History, Keeper of the Archives, and Associate Professor in History at Exeter College, University of Oxford. Half-French but raised in the UK, she has been at Exeter College since 2006 after positions at Merton College and Stanford University. She teaches across a range of historical periods and themes at both undergraduate and graduate levels.

• BA Hons in History, Cambridge (1996)
• DEA (Master's), Paris IV – La Sorbonne (1999)
• PhD in History, Cambridge (2003)

De Bellaigue specializes in the history of childhood and education, women's history, and social mobility in nineteenth-century Britain and France. Her work examines how formal schooling shaped modern ideas about individual development and how women and children contributed to family social advancement. She runs the interdisciplinary research network "Rags to Riches? Experiences of social mobility since 1800" at The Oxford Research Centre for the Humanities (TORCH), which fosters new research through seminars and international workshops.

Her publications focus on comparative educational history between Britain and France in the 19th century, with emphasis on gender, social mobility, and home education. She has edited collections on home education and published extensively on girls' schooling, women teachers, and cross-channel educational comparisons, revealing how educational practices reflected and shaped societal values during this transformative period.

De Bellaigue actively supervises doctoral and Master's students on diverse topics spanning nineteenth and twentieth century Britain and Europe. Her current doctoral students research school magazines in 19th-century England, the history of Champagne, and working-class housing in France. She has supervised Master's theses on Girlhood and magazines in 1950s Britain, Gender and Empire in 19th-century India, Egyptomania, and Boxing in early nineteenth-century London. She also launched and directs the "Rags to Riches?" research network at TORCH, organizing seminars and international workshops on social mobility since 1800.