Dr. Joanna Warson is a post-doctoral research fellow in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. Her research explores France’s relationship with Anglophone Africa in the post-1945 period. Joanna was awarded a PhD from the University of Portsmouth in 2013, for her thesis entitled ‘France in Rhodesia: French policy and perceptions throughout the era of decolonisation’, and has published two book chapters based on her doctoral research. The first is a chapter in a volume on France’s Colonial Legacies, edited by Fiona Barclay (University of Wales Press). The second is a chapter for a collection edited by Tony Chafer and Alexander Keese entitled Francophone Africa at Fifty (Manchester University Press). In July 2014, Joanna was awarded the Pollard Prize, for the best paper presented at an Institute of Historical Research seminar by a researcher within one year of completing their PhD. Her paper, entitled ‘Beyond cooperation and competition: Anglo-French relations, connected histories of decolonisation and Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence, 1965-1980’, will be published in Historical Research in 2015. Joanna is currently researching French involvement in Nigeria and Ghana, 1945-1972, with a view to preparing a proposal for a monograph that will analyse French involvement across Anglophone Africa in the post-war period.

Follow on twitter @Joanna_Warson