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Staff Profile

Dr Jemima Short

Lecturer in French

Background

I completed my PhD here at Newcastle University in 2020 and have since held the post of Lecturer in French.

I have previously worked as a lectrice at the University of Nantes and as a British Council Language Assistant in Paris.

I am a member of the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion committee in the School of Modern Languages, a member of the Labour and Society Research Group, and the North East's Centre for Nineteenth Century Studies.

I am a keen musician and have been part of the volunteer team at Newcastle West End foodbank since 2017. 

My office hours are:

In person meetings/drop-ins on Tuesdays 11-12 in OLB 5.03 (room subject to change later in the semester).

Online meetings/drop-ins on Thursdays 12-2, please email me for a zoom link.

Teaching

My teaching covers French language and the history and politics of France from 1789 to the present day. 


I currently teach on the following modules:

FRE1071 French language level B

FRE1006 La France de 1789 à nos jours

FRE2009 Paris: History and Culture (I teach a five-week unit on revolutions)



In addition I have previously taught on the following modules:

FRE4082 Level D French for professional and academic purposes

FRE2061 French language level C

FRE4009 Gender, Religion, and Politics in France

SML4099 Supervisor on the final year dissertation module


Research
Key words: Catholicism, France, gender roles, politics, care, suffering and sacrifice, historiography, hierarchies of value, identity, 19th century

I position myself primarily in the fields of Catholic history and gender studies, with a particular interest in historiography and gender politics, and with a secondary research interest in the medical humanities and the history of nursing. My current research is provisionally titled ‘A Mutual Preparation for Martyrdom’: the Exemplary Deaths of two Catholics in 1871. This article analyses congregational accounts of the deaths of two leaders: Marie de la Providence (Eugénie Smet), founder of the Auxiliatrices des Ames du Purgatoire, and her Jesuit confessor Pierre Olivaint.
 
My monograph An Invisible Workforce: Nursing nuns in nineteenth-century France, based on my PhD thesis, is currently under review. The methodology for my thesis will be published in the Bloomsbury collection Intersectional Encounters in the 19th-Century Archive in 2021. I completed my PhD, funded by the Northern Bridge (AHRC), in 2020. My thesis was titled 'Nursing Nuns: Visibility, Identity, and Power in the Historiography of three Nineteenth-Century French Congregations’. In this work, I analysed contributions of nuns to healthcare in France from c1830 until 1905 through three case studies of congregations working in Paris and Brittany. Challenging a widely recognised problem of historical silence surrounding the work of nuns, I reposition these women as historical agents and gatekeepers rather than simply victims of a silence imposed from without. Nursing nuns shaped models of healthcare and welfare, constructing holistic care practices which had a profound impact on the lives of their patients. This research was conducted in a range of private congregational archives as well as diocesan, departmental and national archives in France.


Publications