Joanna de Groot
Emeritus Reader

Profile

Biography

BA, DPhil (Oxon)

Joanna de Groot has interests in three main areas. Her initial research into the social history of Iran in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has led to work on various aspects of social, political and cultural change in Iran in that period, and their relation to developments elsewhere in the Middle East, in Europe and in North America. This has involved the comparative study of issues such as modernisation, popular political movements, and the interactions of material and cultural change, drawing on European and American experiences to illumine those in the Middle East, and equally importantly vice versa. It has also stimulated her work on histories of race, empire, ethnicity and nationalism, and in particular on the role of global and colonial relationships in the formation of communities, classes and nations in India, Europe and the Middle East.

Research

Overview

Joanna is also extensively involved in research and teaching in gender and women's history, and has worked on the history of gender divisions, roles and relationships from the eighteenth century onwards in a number of settings (European racial thought and politics, Iranian nationalism, British labour and radical movements, Middle Eastern 'veiling' practices, histories of same sex sexualities).

The importance of conceptual and methodological issues in these two fields has stimulated her work in a third area of enquiry, the ideas, topics, and resources which have shaped historical practice itself. Her studies of gender, imperial and comparative history have led to her current research into the development of British history writing in its global, gendered, and colonial contexts since the mid eighteenth century.

Teaching

Undergraduate

•  (first year Period Topic module)
•  (second year Explorations module)
• Cultures of Empire: British and French Involvement in the Middle East and India, c.1770-1914 (final year Special Subject module)
• Sexualities in History (final year Comparative Histories module)

Postgraduate

• Gendering the Exotic - Exoticising Gender c.1700-1900 (MA Option module)