Current Members
Professor Kate Ferris, Principal Investigator
I am Principal Investigator of the five-year ERC-funded research project, Dictatorship as Experience: a Comparative History of Everyday Life and the ‘Lived Experience’ of Dictatorship on Mediterranean Europe As such I lead the team of postdoctoral and postgraduate researchers working on our various case studies (Fascist Italy; Salazar’s Portugal; Franco’s Spain, Greece under Metaxas and the Colonels’ regime) and co-ordinate our joint publications, which include a comparative thematic monograph exploring Everyday Life in Southern European Dictatorships, co-authored by the project team, and a documentary source reader, The Everyday Life History Reader, co-edited by Huw Halstead and me, under contract with Exeter University Press. As part of the project, I’m also preparing a sole-authored monograph on Everyday Spaces of Dictatorship.
I am a Professor of Modern History in the School of History at the University of St Andrews. I joined the University in 2009, following a lectureship at the University of Durham, and seven years of doctoral and postdoctoral work at University College London. My research interests are in late nineteenth and twentieth century Italian and Spanish history, with a particular focus on subjectivity, agency, and the ‘lived experience’ of dictatorship. I am author of Everyday Life in Fascist Venice, 1929-1940 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) and Imagining ‘America’ in Late Nineteenth Century Spain (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), and co-editor of The Politics of Everyday Life in Fascist Italy. Outside the State? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). Thematically, I have published on topics including food consumption, alcohol and bars, relations between parents, children, and the state and on dancing under dictatorship. I am also interested in research methodologies related to ‘playing with scales’ between different spatial units of analysis from the micro and individual scale through the local and the national to transnational and supra-national scales of analysis. I am co-editor of three journal special issues; ‘Size Matters: Space and Scale in Transnational History’ in The International History Review (2011); ‘Alcohol production and consumption in contemporary Europe: Identity, practice and power through wine’ Contemporary European History, (vol 29.4, 2020); and ‘‘Everyday life’ and the history of dictatorship in Southern Europe’ European History Quarterly, vol 52.2 2022.
Dr. Nathaniel Andrews, Research Fellow (Argentina)
I joined the ‘Dictatorship as Experience’ project as a Research Fellow in Spring 2023. My research centres primarily on the history of the anarchist movement in Argentina and Spain. I am particularly interested in the ways in which ideology manifests itself in everyday life; in people’s everyday forms of resistance to authority (whether that be in the home, the workplace, the school, or public spaces); and in trans-local and transnational activist networks. My first monograph (currently in preparation) explores anarchist ‘prefigurative politics’ in Argentina and Spain between 1890 and 1930. Bringing together archival sources and oral histories, this study – based on my AHRC-funded doctoral thesis –shows how anarchists reflected their ideological beliefs through their use of space and time; through ‘informal’ resistance such as humour and satire; and through their relationship to the family. To date, I have published in the International Journal of Iberian Studies, the Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, and Anarchist Studies.
Before joining the ‘Dictatorship as Experience’ project, I was Senior Editor at British Online Archives where I co-produced and co-presented the forthcoming ‘Talking History with British Online Archives’ podcast; a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Leeds Arts & Humanities Research Institute; and a Lecturer in Spanish and Latin American Cultural Studies at the University of Manchester. I obtained my PhD from the University of Leeds in 2021, received an MA in Modern History from the same institution in 2017, and completed a BA in Hispanic Studies at University College London in 2015.
Joshua Hill, PhD Candidate (Spain)
I am a historian of the Mediterranean with a focus on 20th Century Spain, Italy and Morocco. I joined the Dictatorship as Experience project after completing an MA in Contemporary History at the University of Birmingham where my research interests were centred around gender and masculinity. Towards the end of my MA I became increasingly interested in the intersection of drugs and gender in fascist Italy.
My PhD, titled ‘Cultures, Practices and Politics of Cannabis Consumption in 20th Century Colonial and Dictatorial Spain (1920-1980)’ continues to engage with these themes in Francoist Spain. In particular I look at how narratives around cannabis intersected with the categories of race, class, gender and generation in Spain (and the Spanish Protectorate in Morocco) between 1920 and 1980. I am in the process of publishing a contribution to an edited volume on the relationship between altered states of mind and popular cultures (forthcoming, as part of the Palgrave Studies in the History of Subculture and Popular Music series).
I also had the pleasure of being part of the Europaeum Scholars Programme, a two year policy and leadership programme for researchers who want to contribute to contemporary European policy-making. Through this programme our inter-disciplinary group drafted a policy proposal for the EU, “Lost in Transition? Charting a Course for Europe’s Automotive Industry Workers”. I aim to continue to engage with and have an impact on contemporary issues as my career progresses.
Islay Shelbourne, Events and Media Assistant
Islay Shelbourne is the Events and Media Assistant for the Dictatorship as Experience Project. She is responsible for running the Project’s website and social media, helping to organise upcoming seminar series, and has recently taken over production of the ‘Miniatures Podcast’ from Dr. Huw Halstead. Islay is an Environmental History PhD candidate at the University of St Andrews, where her thesis explores Californian experiences of the 1918-19 influenza pandemic. She previously studied at Queen Mary, University of London and the Institute of Historical Research, where her MRes thesis was published in the School of Advanced Study Open Access Repository (SASspace). Islay joined the Dictatorship as Experience in January 2023 and is excited to support the project in its final year, and to apply everyday life history methodologies to her own research.
Affiliated Members
Dr Huw Halstead, Lecturer in Public History – University of Edinburgh (Greece)
I am a Lecturer in Public History at the University of Edinburgh (School of History, Classics, and Archaeology), having formerly held the position fo Research Fellow on the ‘Dictatorship as Experience’ Project from 2018-2023.
My research focuses on conflict, displacement, memory, and public history, with a particular focus on the history of the Mediterranean world and former Ottoman territories. My book Greeks without Greece: Homelands, Belonging, and Memory amongst the Expatriated Greeks of Turkey (Routledge, 2019) combined oral history, archival research, and ethnographic fieldwork to explore the identities and memories of the displaced Greek communities of Istanbul and the island Imbros. I’ve also conducted research on return migration; the 1974 conflict on Cyprus; place and landscape in Thessaly; digital memory and transnational solidarities; and Holocaust education.
Prior to joining the School of History at the University of St Andrews, I was the Macmillan-Rodewald Postdoctoral Student at the British School at Athens, and an Associate Lecturer in the Department of History and the Institute for the Public Understanding of the Past, University of York. I have taught courses on public history, oral history, the Holocaust and genocide, Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, decolonisation, urban history, modern British history, and historical methodologies. I hold a PhD, an MA (by Research), and a BA in History from the University of York. More of my research can be found in the journals History & Anthropology, History & Memory, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, Modern Greek Studies, Journal of Migration History, European History Quartlerly, The Journal of the Historical Association, and Memory Studies.
As part of my position as Research Fellow on the ‘Dictatorship as Experience’ Project from 2018-2023, I also created and presented the ‘Miniatures Podcast’ series 1 and 2, which can be found here.
Dr Yannick Lengkeek (Portugal)
I am a historian of modern Portugal with a particular interest in everyday life approaches to dictatorial rule, political economies of leisure, games and gambling as sites of social interaction, concepts of idleness, and moral panics in far-right and authoritarian regimes. My research approaches these topics within a comparative framework of analysis, situating them in global developments throughout the twentieth century.
I defended my PhD dissertation New State, Old Vices: The Everyday Dimensions of Gaming and Gambling under the Portuguese Estado Novo, 1933-1974 at the University of St Andrews in January 2023, where also took up a position as Associate Lecturer. My teaching included sub-honours and honours modules, as well as specific modules (Directed Reading) for MLitt students. Thematically speaking, I cover major themes in modern history, post-war historiographies and memory politics, and histories of tourism and counter-cultural movements.
Prior to joining the School of History in St Andrews, I studied Colonial and Global History (Research Master/MPhil) at Leiden University, where I conducted archival fieldwork at the National Archives of the Republic of Indonesia. My MA thesis used Dutch and Indonesian archives to investigate the impact of fascism on an influential nationalist party in late colonial Indonesia. A summary of my findings was published in Fascism: Journal of Comparative Fascist Studies, and my research was funded by the Leiden University Fund (LUF) and awarded the ‘National Master’s Thesis Prize for Asian Studies 2018’ by the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS).
I am currently in the final stages of publishing a contribution for an edited volume on the role of games and play in writing histories ‘from below’ (forthcoming with De Gruyter) and am preparing a journal special issue on Play and the Everyday in Historical Perspective, which resulted from an eponymous workshop I planned and organised at the University of St Andrews in 2022. Finally, I am also involved in publications linked to the “Dictatorship as Experience” project, including Everyday Life in Southern European Dictatorships (as co-author) and The Everyday Life History Reader (as a contributor).
Dr Ushehwedu Kufakurinani, Research Fellow (Zimbabwe)
Ushehwedu Kufakurinani is a Social and Economic Historian trained at the University of Zimbabwe, where he held the positions of Senior Lecturer and Chairperson of the then Economic History Department. Before joining St. Andrews, he was a research fellow with King’s College London, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine. He is currently a Research Fellow with the School of History at the University of St. Andrews. His research interests span from gender and imperial studies (colonial period) to more contemporary economic and social research themes that include informality, resource governance, migration and conflict. Central to his works is understanding the everyday and how this is navigated over time and space. Kufakurinani has co-edited two books, one on women and Zimbabwean music and another on how Zimbabweans have navigated the economic crisis. He has also published a monograph titled “Elasticity in Domesticity: White Women in Rhodesian Zimbabwe 1890 to 1979”. Kufakurinani has also co-edited journal special issues on Samir Amin, gender in Zimbabwe and the social and economic history of colonial Zimbabwe. He joined the Dictatorship as Experience Project as a Research Fellow in 2023.
Dr Grazia Sciacchitano, Research Fellow (Italy & Spain)
My research engages in a comparative and interdisciplinary approach to the study of twenty century Italy and Spain. I am interested in the understanding of how ideologies, policies and politics worked in praxis, investigating in particular their impact, and how they have been embodied and reshaped by people and societies (both urban and rural). I am also interested in the methodology of comparative history and in new perspectives and paradigms on the Mediterranean Europe, that are able to break down national boundaries and dichotomies such as modernity and backwardness, ‘central’ and ‘peripheral’ nation-states of Europe.
I obtained my PhD at the European University Institute in September 2018 with a dissertation entitled ‘The Damned of the South: rural landless labourers in Sicily and Andalusia, 1946 to the present.’ Through a comparison structured on different scales I investigated the socio-economic reforms that were implemented in Italy and Spain during the 1950s and 1960s and the direct effects that they had on the two territories and people who lived there. Indeed, my dissertation reveals the centrality of landless labourers in the shaping of Italian and Spanish history in the 1950s and 1960s, as it describes their passage from the traditional peasant economy to that of farming business based on labourers.