Claire Morelon

I am a social and cultural historian of Habsburg Central Europe in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. I studied for a Master at the Institut d’Études Politiques (Sciences Po) in Paris and an MA at Yale University. I hold a dual PhD degree from the University of Birmingham and Sciences Po. Prior to coming to Manchester, I was a Junior Research Fellow at the Queen’s College, University of Oxford and a Research Fellow at the University of Padua.

My book Streetscapes of War and Revolution: Prague, 1914-1920 (Cambridge University Press, 2024) analyses the transformations brought by war and regime change in the city. It offers a case study of the transition from empire to nation-state, reassessing the link between the First World War and the new post-1918 world order at the local level.

My current project focuses on the counter-reactions to democratization in Habsburg Austria. The extension of suffrage was a central battle in the Austrian half of the Empire around the turn of the century. This project focuses on this key period in the history of the multi-national Empire to analyse the opposition to workers’ political action - all the sections of Austro-Hungarian society that experienced the rise in social conflicts as threats to the established social order. While the historiography has often focused on intellectual history, I propose to write a social history based on events in factories, on the streets, and at the ballot boxes. Individual topics explored are the strategies of employers against unionized workers, the fears generated by workers’ protests and the actions of industrialists against them. I am working on a monograph provisionally entitled Democratization and Its Discontents: Social Order and Citizenship in Late Habsburg Austria, 1890s – 1918.

Methodologically, I am interested in how sensory history and material culture can offer new insights on the experience of war. I have, for example, examined the disruption of everyday rhythms and soundscapes during the First World War by looking at the requisition of church bells in Austria-Hungary. This work resulted in an article published in Past & Present and I plan to explore other forms of sensorial disruption in future research.

Email: [email protected]

Office: Samuel Alexander Building, W2.8