THREE AHRC NWCDTP Collaborative Doctoral Awards on the project “Visual Cultures of Fascism”

Description

Applications are invited for three fully-funded AHRC NWCDTP Collaborative Doctoral Award (+3) beginning in September 2025.

The rising popularity of the 35mm Leica camera and the Parvo video camera in the 1920s transformed the way that journalists, early professional photographers, amateurs and filmmakers took candid action shots and made photography and film practical political weapons for the first time. These years also witnessed the growth of fascist parties and regimes across Europe which, alongside Russian communism, proved particularly adept at using images as the cornerstones of their political communication, branding and propaganda. Co-supervised by three leading historians of European fascism, three PGR students will research how fascists used photography and film to promote themselves and their programmes. This project is grounded in historical research methods, while benefitting from insights from Art History, Photography, and Film Studies. Such an approach has only recently emerged as a research topic within Fascist Studies. The limited secondary literature on the topic focuses disproportionately on the fascist regimes in Italy and Germany, and almost no comparative work has been done on fascist visual cultures transnationally. By comparing the fascist regime in Mussolini’s Italy to movements in France and Romania, the research team will be able to show how the differing availability of technology and distinct visual cultures in Western, Eastern and Southern Europe resulted in contrasting uses of photography and film across the continent.

Analysing images used by fascists from Italy, France and Romania alongside one another will allow the team to identify what photographers from all three countries had in common, as well as throwing national idiosyncrasies into more sharp relief. Working with images from Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent Archive Service (SSTAS) and the Wiener Holocaust Library further expands the comparative perspective of this project, helping researchers to see how visual cultures on the continent influenced the ways that local fascism was presented to the British public. The students will apply the methodologies they have developed for interpreting fascist visual cultures to items held in the partners’ collections and will use them to create public-facing resources to be used by the partners in future educational campaigns. Collaborating with archivists and curators will allow students to engage with some of the same challenges that fascists had in the 1920s and 1930s when it came to deciding how best to use images to communicate with a wider public as well as engaging with the ethical challenges involved in using propaganda images in educational contexts. These projects digital curation, interpretation, and technical skills, and students will also gain experience working in the non-profit sector while directly generating impact related to their research in a way that informs the research process itself.

The deadline for applications is 5pm on Friday, 28 February 2025. Please send application materials to Roland Clark (clarkr@liverpool.ac.uk) in the first instance, stating which of the three projects you wish to work on and including a current CV, a completed EDI form, and a 500 word summary of how you intend to approach the topic. You will be sent the EDI after submitting the CV and summary.

Specific enquiries should be directed to ONE (the most relevant) member of the supervisory team:

• Professor Roland Clark, University of Liverpool (clarkr@liverpool.ac.uk)
• Professor Aristotle Kallis, Keele University (a.kallis@keele.ac.uk)
• Chris Millington, Manchester Metropolitan University (c.millington@mmu.ac.uk)
• Christine Schmidt, Wiener Holocaust Library in London (cschmidt@wienerholocaustlibrary.org)
• Rebecca Jackson, Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent Archive Service (jackson@staffordshire.gov.uk)

Applicants must have achieved a first class or high 2:1 undergraduate degree and postgraduate qualification (or expecting to complete PGT studies before September 2025) in a related Humanities or Social Science discipline. Competency in the languages of the countries being studied is required. Applicants are advised to check the AHRC NWCDTP guidance on eligibility for Studentship Awards which can be found on the NWCDTP website: https://www.nwcdtp.ac.uk/home/current-students/funding-prospective-students/

Studentship One

Visual story-telling and ‘fascist brand’: the photobooks of Fascist Italy (Keele University)

Primary supervisor: Aristotle Kallis

Secondary supervisors: Chris Millington and Rebecca Jackson

In opposition but more so in power, Italian Fascists excelled in deploying images to build and spread a powerful visual brand with both national and international audiences in mind. This project focuses on the genre of photobooks - combining images with text to create a compelling, part-documentary and part-utopian, visual narrative. By studying the evolution of Fascist photobooks in Italy in the 1920s and 1930s, the project will analyse how photography was elevated to the status of supreme story-telling and mythopoietic medium for the regime; how it was used to shape and circulate the ‘f(F)ascist brand’; and how it has served as an early prime example of using images to build and disseminate populist myths.

This student will supplement their work on Italian fascism through a CDA with SSTAS, drawing on police files and fascist memorabilia from Stoke-on-Trent City Archives as well as collections held by the Media Archive for Central England (MACE) to add context and a deeper understanding of how the visual cultures they discovered in Italy influenced fellow fascists in Britain and became translated into a very different context; and producing public-facing outputs (exhibition material; research guides, digital curation) that educates a wider public audience about the history of the far right.

Studentship Two

‘Picturing a Future France in French Fascism’ (Manchester Metropolitan University)

Primary supervisor: Chris Millington

Secondary supervisor: Roland Clark and Christine Schmidt

This project asks how groups on the French far right used visual culture both to condemn the state of the country under the democratic Third Republic and to present their projects for the future transformation of the nation. It investigates three groups on the French far right: the monarchist Action Française, the extreme right-wing Croix de Feu (later called theParti Social Français), and the fascist Solidarité Française. Historians have tended to analyse written sources when seeking to understand French fascist programmes. Conversely, using photographs, films, cartoons, posters and the picture press, this project will examine how the far right used images to convey their assessment of the ‘decadence’ of contemporary France and their plans for the future.

This student will add comparative and practical perspectives to their research through a CDA with the Wiener Holocaust Library in London. The student will work with Clark’s student (see below) to curate an interactive digital exhibition using materials from the Library’s collections, using the Library’s bespoke platform or other platforms, such as StoryMap (pending external subscription), in order to engage wider audiences with the findings of the project. They will also author relevant blogs and/or short-form visual content for the Library’s website and social media channels, in an effort to engage diverse and younger audiences with the library’s holdings.

Studentship Three

‘Photography and Branding in Romanian Fascism’ (University of Liverpool)

Primary supervisor: Roland Clark

Secondary supervisor: Aristotle Kallis and Christine Schmidt

This project asks how fascists in Romania used photography to challenge the dominant images of them as hooligans and terrorists that circulated in the mainstream media, creating a distinctly fascist ‘brand’. It focuses on three groups – the National Christian Defence League, the Legion of the Archangel Michael (also known as the Iron Guard), and the National Christian Party, covering the period from 1922 to 1941. The project looks at postcards, posters, published photo albums, party newspapers and photographs found in secret police files to see how fascists curated a particular image of themselves, how the visual language of fascism differed from one group to another, and how this image changed over time. The student will work at the Wiener Holocaust Library, with Millington’s student, on the projects described above.