Staff Profile:Professor Andrew Knapp

Name:

Professor Andrew Knapp

Job Title:

Exams Officer - all years

Responsibilities:

Within the French Studies Programmes I teach the historical and political half of the Part 1 Contemporary France module (FR103), the Part 2 module on Five Wars and Three Republics: France 1870-1962 (FR209), and the Part 3 module on France and Europe since 1945 (FR321).

For the Centre for the Advanced Study of French History I teach on Gaullism in the French History MA.

I am Director of the European Studies BA Programme, for which I also teach the Part 1 survey module on Europe since 1945 (EU1POST45). I also contribute to the Part 2 module on Unity, Nationalism and Regionalism in Europe (EU2UNR), concentrating on political parties, European citizenship, and the relationship between Europe and globalisation, and have supplied two case studies (on Gaullism and Europe, and the European Constitutional Treaty) to the final-year modules EU3CS1 and EU3CS2.

For the School of Literature and Languages I teach the Part 1 module on British History since 1850, designed for overseas students (ML1MB2).

I am also the current Examination officer for the Department of Modern Languages and European Studies.

Areas of Interest:

My research interests include French government and politics, especially political parties, and contemporary French history, especially the wartime and postwar periods. I am currently working on the Allied bombing of France between 1940 and 1945. France took the equivalent (in tonnage of bombs) of nearly eight Blitzes from British and American bombers, and suffered over 55,000 dead in this period; my primary interest is to find out how the French, and the Vichy state, responded.

Postgraduate Supervision:

I am currently supervising PhD students working on 'Children under the Allied Bombs: France 1940-1945' and 'Decolonisation and European integration in the 1950's: Britain, France and Belgium'. I should welcome PhD students interested in modern French politics, especially political parties, and wartime and postwar history in France.

Research groups / Centres:

• Member of the Centre for the Advanced Study of French History

I am currently completing working on a major AHRC-funded joint research project on Bombing, States and Peoples in Western Europe, 1940-45, covering the effects of Allied bombing on French civilians and the reactions of the Vichy state and the Free French. The project includes a comparative book, written with Claudia Baldoli, on 'Forgotten Blitzes: France and Italy under Allied Bombs, 1940-1945, to be published by Continuum in spring 2012..

As well as the 'Bombing, States and Peoples' project, I am involved with the Reading-based 'Liberal Way of War' programme, funded by the Leverhulme Trust.

Publications:

My publications include;

Le gaullisme après de Gaulle, (Paris: Le Seuil, 1996)

Government and Politics in Western Europe, (with Yves Meny: 3rd edn., Oxford University Press, 1998)

Parties and the Party System in France, (London: Palgrave, 2004)

The Government and Politics of France, (with Vincent Wright, London: Routledge, 2006)

The Uncertain Foundation: France at the Liberation, 1944-47, (London: Palgrave, 2007)

Bombing, States and Peoples in Western Europe, 1940-1945 (edited, with Claudia Baldoli and Richard Overy:London: Continuum, 2011

'The Destruction and Liberation of Le Havre in Modern Memory', in War In History, 14.4 (2007), pp. 476-499.

'"How many Frenchmen did you kill?" British Bombing Policy towards France, 1940-1945', with Lindsey Dodd, in French History, 22.4 (2008), pp. 469-492

Qualifications:

• BA in History (Cambridge, 1976)
• D.Phil in Politics (Oxford, 1984)
• Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Academiques (2003)

I have taught in Isfahan, Iran, at the Le Havre Business School, and at two different universities in Paris, as well as working for Oxford University Press, before being appointed to the Department of French Studies (now part of the Department of Modern Languages and European Studies) at Reading in 1990.

I became a member of the Franco-British Council in 2006 and was made an Officier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques in 2010.