Dr Gavin Murray-Miller

Senior Lecturer in Modern European History

School of History, Archaeology and Religion

: murray-millerg@cardiff.ac.uk
: +44 (0)29 2087 6715
: 4.38, John Percival Building

: Available for postgraduate supervision

Gavin Murray-Miller is a senior lecturer in modern history. In the past, he has held research fellowships at the Leibniz-Institut für Europäische Geschichte (IEG) in Mainz, Germany, the École normale supérieure (ENS) in Paris, the Centre for Advanced Studies (CAS) in Sofia, Bulgaria, and the State Academic University for the Humanities (GAUGN) at the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow. In 2021-2022, he was an Alexander von Humboldt fellow at the Universität Leipzig.

His research has focused on Europe and the Francophone Arab world, with expertise in European political history and North Africa in the long nineteenth century. His work has explored a diverse range of themes, including post-colonial historiography, orientalism, revolutionary governance and democracy, and comparative theories of nationalism and empire. His most recent book Empire Unbound: France and the Muslim Mediterranean was published by Oxford University Press in 2022.

Between 2011 and 2016 he also served as a researcher for the digital humanities project The People of The Founding Era launched by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. The project brings together a combination of biographical and social data contained within the digitized editions of the Founding Fathers collection at the University of Virginia. The prosopographic database covers colonial America and the early republican period, providing a valuable resource for our understanding of the Atlantic world.

His latest work is concerned with themes of empire and transnationalism in the Mediterranean region, with special attention to the encounter between European and Muslim socieities. He is equally engaged in research on European and global radical politics.

Gavin's teaching consists of courses on transnational European history from 1789 to the present and revolutionary politics between the French and Russian revolutions in a global context.

Education

Ph.D., University of Virginia (2011)

MA, Louisiana State University (2005)

BA, Hunter College, CUNY (2003)

Associations

Senior Fellow, State Academic University for the Humanities, Moscow Russia (2018 - Present)

Senior Postdoctoral Fellow, Centre for Advanced Studies, Sofia, Bulgaria (2020)

Postdoctoral Fellow, Leibniz Institut für Europäische Geschichte, Mainz, Germany (2014)

Pensionnaire étranger, École Normale Supérieure, Paris, France (2009)

Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg Stipendiat (2006)

Honours and awards

The Centre for Adanced Studies, Postdoctoral Fellow (2020), Sofia, Bulgaria.

State Academic University for the Humanities, Postdoctoral Fellowship (2018), Mossow, Russia. Grant Project: Liberal Values and Traditional Society in Comparative Context (funded by the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation)

Appointed Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (2017), United Kingdom

The Leibniz Institut für Europäische Geschichte, Postdoctoral Fellowship (2014), Mainz, Germany.

École Normale Supérieure Fellowship (2008), Paris, France.

The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, Dumas Malone Research Fellowship (2008), United States.

Professional memberships

Society for French Historical Studies (former editorial board member)

Royal Historical Society (fellow)

American Historical Association

Society for The Study of French History

Speaking engagements

"Waging War and Making Peace as a 'Muslim Power': European Empire and the First World War,” University of Venice Ca’ Foscari, Venice, Italy. 24 June 2020.
"The Trans-Imperial Convergence: Ottoman Exiles, North Africa and How Paris Became a Nodal City in Debates Over Islamic and Arab Modernization in The Early Twentieth Century.” Twelfth Annual Conference of the International Society for Cultural History, Tallinn University, Estonia. 29 June 2019.
“An Empire Unbound: Islam, Ottomans and Trans-Imperial Subjects in Nineteenth-Century French North Africa." Global and Transnational History Seminar Series, University of East Anglia, Norwich. 21 November 2018.
"Geographies of Radicalism: Rethinking the Bounds of Global Solidarity in the Long Nineteenth Century," Keynote lecture, GAUGN, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow. 3 September 2018.
"France and the Mediterranean Imaginary in the Nineteenth Century," Istituto Italiano Studi Filosofici, Naples. 4 July 2018.
"Bonapartism in Algeria." Society for the Study of French History, Annual Conference. University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. 26 June 2017.
"Outremer Europe: From Imperial Peripheries to a Global European History." Eigth Annual Symposium for the Research Network of the History of the Idea of Europe. University of East Anglia, Norwich. 14 June 2017.
“Muslim Empire or Muslim Nation?: Colonial Islam and the Mediterranean World, 1850-1914.” Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies. University of Exeter. 15 December 2016.
"Thinking Through The Imperial Nation-State: Nationalism and The Imperial Turn in The Twenty-First Century.” Russian State Academic University for the Humanities. Moscow. 11 May 2016.
“Reconciling Occident and Orient in Colonial Bosnia: The Habsburg ‘Civilizing Mission’ and Bosnian Islam, 1878-1918.” Views on “Savage Europe” Research Symposium. Cardiff University. 7 May 2016.
“Teaching National Histories in a Global Age: Diversifying Historical Narratives in The Classroom.” Teaching History in The Twenty-First Century Research Workshop. Institute of Historical Research. London. 19 March 2016.
"Nationalizing Empires, Nationalizing Muslims: Islam and the Imperial Nation-State in Nineteenth-Century Europe.” Colonial/Postcolonial New Researchers Workshop. Institute of Historical Research. London. 8 February 2016.
"Civilization, Modernity and Europe: The Making and Unmaking of a Conceptual Unity.” 22nd International Conference of Europeanists, Council of European Studies. Sciences Po. Paris. 9 July 2015.
"Framing Multi-Confessionalism: Tolerance, Religious Pluralism and Secularism in the Nineteenth Century." Society for French Historical Studies, Sixtieth Annual Conference. McGill University. Montreal. 24-26 April 2014.
"Not a Colony 'Properly Said': France, Algeria and the Making of Trans-Mediterranean France In the Nineteenth Century." Society for French Historical Studies, Fifty-Ninth Annual Conference. Harvard University/MIT, Cambridge. 4-6 April 2013.

2022

Murray-Miller, G. 2022. Mediterranean imaginaries: Europe, Empire, and Islam in the nineteenth century. In: D'Auria, M. and Gallo, F. eds. Mediterranean Europe(s): Rethinking Europe from its Southern Shores. Routledge, pp. 56-75.
Murray-Miller, G. 2022. Empire Unbound: France and the Muslim Mediterranean, 1880-1918. Oxford University Press.
Murray-Miller, G. 2022. Les réseaux politiques en Afrique du Nord : circulation, diffusion et transferts de 1908 à 1914. Revue d’Histoire Contemporaine de l’Afrique 3, pp. 49-60. (10.51185/journals/rhca.2022.0304)

2016

Murray-Miller, G. 2016. Flâneurs in The Orient: The Colonial Maghrib and the origins of the French Modernist tradition. In: Goldwyn, A. J. and Silverman, R. M. eds. Mediterranean Modernism: Intercultural Exchange and Aesthetic Development, 1880-1945. Mediterranean Perspectives Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 317-342.

2015

Murray-Miller, G. 2015. The Paris attacks and France's Republican tradition. History Today 2015(17 Nov)

2014

Murray-Miller, G. 2014. Neither reformers nor réformés: The construction of French modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Historical Reflections Reflexions Historiques 40(3), pp. 44-67. (10.3167/hrrh.2014.400303)
Murray-Miller, G. 2014. A conflicted sense of nationality: Napoleon III’s Arab Kingdom and the paradoxes of French multiculturalism. French Colonial History 15(1), pp. 1-37.
Murray-Miller, G. 2014. Imagining the trans-Mediterranean Republic: Algeria, republicanism and the ideological origins of the French Imperial Nation-State, 1848-1870. French Historical Studies 37(2), pp. 303-330. (10.1215/00161071-2401620)

2012

Murray-Miller, G. 2012. Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880). In: Fitzpatrick, C. and Tunstall, D. A. eds. Dictionary of Literary Biography: Orientalist Writers. Dictionary of Literary Biography Series Vol. 366. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group Publishing, pp. 80-87.
Murray-Miller, G. 2012. Eugène Fromentin (1820–1876). In: Fitzpatrick, C. and Tunstall, D. A. eds. Dictionary of Literary Biography: Orientalist Writers. Dictionary of Literary Biography Series Vol. 366. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group Publishing, pp. 94-99.
Murray-Miller, G. 2012. Théophile Gautier (1811–1872). In: Fitzpatrick, C. and Tunstall, D. A. eds. Dictionary of Literary Biography: Orientalist Writers. Dictionary of Literary Biography Series Vol. 366. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group Publishing, pp. 107-114.

2011

Murray-Miller, G. 2011. The French Cult of the Modern: Power, Identity, and the Idiom of Newness in Nineteenth-Century France. Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies 37(2), pp. 29-49.

2010

Murray-Miller, G. 2010. A narrative of death and resurrection: emplotment and decadence in Nineteenth-Century French Catholic ideology. ARC: The Journal of The Faculty of Religious Studies 38, pp. 163-175.

2008

Murray-Miller, G. 2008. In the land of the lotus eaters: travel writing and the ambiguities of Colonial representation in French Algeria, 1830-1870. Peer English: The Journal of New Critical Thinking 3, pp. 55-63.

Courses Taught

Undergraduate Courses

HS1605: Modern France since 1789
HS1749: Nations, Empires and Borderlands Since 1789
HS1887: Europe and the Revolutionary Tradition in the Long Nineteenth Century
HS1701: Approaches to History
HS1702: Examining Historical Debate
HS1801: Dissertation Supervision

Postgraduate Courses

HST932: Conflict and Community in Modern France
HST641: Trends in Historical Research

Research interests

Modern France

The French Colonial Empire

Nationalism and Citizenship Studies

The Global Nineteenth Century

The Age of Revolution and Radical Political Movements

Europe and the Islamic World