Jessica Wardhaugh

Jessica Wardhaugh is an Associate Professor in French Studies at the University of Warwick's School of Modern Languages and Cultures, part of the Faculty of Arts. She joined Warwick in 2010 after holding positions as a Junior Research Fellow at Christ Church, Oxford, and a Special Lecturer at Bristol University. Her academic background includes a BA and MA from Durham University, and a DPhil from the University of Oxford.

Her research explores:

• Modern French political culture through spectacles and popular politics
• The dynamics of local, national, and European communities
• Women's resistance during the Nazi Occupation
• Right-wing political movements and royalist cosmopolitanism
• The interplay between personal narratives and political ideologies
• Theatre as a tool for political utopia and community formation

Her publications predominantly focus on 20th-century French political culture, with recurring themes of resistance, identity formation, and cultural representation. Recent works analyze transnational resistance networks, Franco-Russian intellectual exchanges, and the cultural paradoxes of the Third Republic.

She has led or contributed to several funded research projects including studies on women's resistance in Occupied France, European identity construction ('Constructing Europe'), the Munich Crisis of 1938, and conservatism in mass culture (with Jaume I University, Spain). Wardhaugh supervises MA and PhD students in modern French politics and theatre, and teaches modules on French political movements, anarchist culture, and right-wing ideologies.