Adrian Pole

Thesis title: 'The Spanish are a Wonderful People': Transnational Encounters with the International Brigades in Civil-War Spain, 1936-1939.

Biography

Background

I completed both a BA and MA in history at University College London before taking up my doctoral studies here at Edinburgh with the assistance of the Principal's Career Development Scholarship.

Qualifications

BA in history, UCL (2013-2016)

MA in History, UCL (2019-2020)

Undergraduate teaching

I have tutored on The Historian's Toolkit (HIST08032), Early Modern History: A Connected World (HIST08034), Introduction to Historiography (HIST08044) and Themes in Modern European History (HIST08043). I have also tutored at the HCA Writing Centre. 

Research summary

My principal interest is in modern Spain - in particular, foreign involvement in the civil war of 1936-1939.  My research is concerned with the extraordinary range of cross-cultural encounters which took place between Spaniards and the tens of thousands of foreigners who took up arms for the government side throughout the war. I aim to uncover the different ways in which groups and individuals operating at all levels of war-time society came to terms with massive foreign involvement in the conflict by placing both Spain and Spaniards at the centre of my research into transnational mobilisation.

Knowledge exchange

Public History:

I have published popular history articles on Spain in a number of magazines including Timeless Travels and the Madrid Metropolitan. My research into the connections between my hometown of Leicester and 1930s Spain was brought to public attention in a 2019 exhibition on social justice put together by the University of Leicester. This research has formed the basis of several public talks. 

Publications in journals and edited volumes:

'Ruedo Ibérico: The Publisher That Took on Franco' in Joshua Newmark (ed.), Remembering Spain: Essays, Memoirs and Poems on the International Brigades and the Spanish Civil War (The Clapton Press, 2023), pp. 149-154.

'The ‘Soldiers of Culture’ and their ‘Little Comrades’: The International Brigades and the Children of Civil War Spain, 1936–9', Contemporary European History (online first view, August 2022), pp. 1-15, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/contemporary-european-history/article/soldiers-of-culture-and-their-little-comrades-the-international-brigades-and-the-children-of-civil-war-spain-19361939/DB75893D642C9B3AD85F32843BBD821E#article

'‘Emphatically Not Cricket’: British Eyewitness Testimonies of Revolutionary Catalonia, 1936', International Journal of Iberian Studies, 35:2 (2022) pp. 175–93, https://doi.org/10.1386/ijis_00071_1

'Men of Clear Vision: Frederick Sykes, Roy Watts and the Spanish Civil War', Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society, Volume 94 (2020), pp.199-236 (with Henry Brown).

Invited speaker

'¿Una escuela para la nación antifascista? Recuperando el papel olvidado de los soldados españoles en las Brigadas Internacionales, 1936-1939', paper at New directions in Modern Spanish History: A European PGR/ECR Workshop, Edinburgh, Scotland, 17-18 July 2023 (upcoming).

‘Imagining the Antifascist Community: The International Brigades and Their Encounters with CivilWar Spain, 1936-1939’, paper at the L'Espanya d'Entreguerres international workshop, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain, 10 March 2023.

Lecture on presenting academic papers for the Undergraduate History Academic Conference, The University of Edinburgh, 31 January 2023.

Opening remarks at the Identity, State and Society in Modern Spain Conference, Canterbury, England, 10-11 September 2022.

‘Emphatically Not Cricket: Eyewitness Testimonies of Revolutionary Catalonia’, paper at the Newcastle University Postgraduate Forum, online, November 2020.

Organiser

New directions in Modern Spanish History: A European PGR/ECR Workshop, The University of Edinburgh, Scotland, co-organiser and participant, 17-18 July 2023 (upcoming).

International Conference: Identity, State and Society in Modern Spain, The University of Kent, England, co-organiser and chair, 10-11 September 2022.

Co-founder, co-organiser and chair of The Modern Spanish History Doctoral Seminars, online, 2020-22.

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