Claire Helena Griffiths is professor of French and francophone studies in the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Chester in Great Britain. She was previously senior research fellow in Francophone African studies in the Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation and instructor in the Departments of French and Modern Languages at the University of Hull. She has taught courses on the processes of colonisation and decolonisation in the French Empire, the political history of French-speaking Africa, African women’s writing in French, French political art, translation and interpreting.
Education and career
Griffiths earned a BA (Hons.) in French and politics from University of Warwick, an M.Phil. in Politics from the University of Bath and a Ph.D. from Hull University, Before beginning her academic research and teaching career, she worked as a trainee translator for the European Commission. On February 27, 2008, Griffiths delivered the Peter Forster Memorial Lecture at University of Hull: Engendering Social Development Policy: A Case of Globalisation or Colonial Revisionism in Francophone Africa?
The Politics of Social Policy - Health and Old Age Policies in France 1930-1970. (M.Phil. thesis)
"Social Development in Africa: the case of Morocco", Journal of Gender Studies, 1996
"Teaching Translation: methodologies for large-group teaching", Actos, University of Santiago de Compostela, 1996
"Gabon - from democratisation to social development?", French Studies Bulletin, 1996
Social Development in Francophone Africa: The Case of Women in Gabon and Morocco," African Studies Center, Boston University, (ISSN 0281-6814) WP 211 (1998)
"Education in Transition in Francophone West Africa" in R. Griffin (ed.), Education in Transition – International Perspectives on the Politics and Processes of Change, Oxford: Symposium Press, 2002, pp. 239–258.
"Mapping discrimination: Gender, race and disadvantage in French West Africa", Equal Opportunities International, 2003, 22 (5), pp. 1–10.
"Reporting the Empire: Reading texts from French West Africa", French Studies Bulletin, 2004
Gender and Social Development in Francophone Africa - Realities and Fictions (2005, Ph.D. thesis)
"Colonial subjects: race and gender in French West Africa: An annotated translation and presentation of Denise Savineau’s Report on Women and the Family in French West Africa, 1938" in International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 2006, Vol. 26 (special issue, 11/12), pp. 449–594. (ISSN 0144-333X)
(French) La Famille en A.O.F.: Condition de la femme Rapport inedit Denise Savineau - Presentation et etude, (Editions l'Harmattan, Paris: 2007) 186 pp. (ISBN 978-2-296-04322-0).
"Colonial Education" in Prem Poddar, Lars Jensen, Rajeev S. Patke (eds.), Historical Companion to Postcolonial Literatures: Continental Europe and Its Empires, Edinburgh Univ. Press, 2008, 504 pp. (ISBN 0748623949).
"Beyond closed doors: exposing modern slavery on a global scale" with Kevin Bales, (Diversity Equality & Inclusion: An International Journal, 2010)
Globalizing the Postcolony: contesting discourses of gender and development in francophone Africa (Lexington Books) 2011, 340pp.
Griffiths directs a project to translate and electronically archive colonial documents from the Senegalese National Archives, particularly documents on African women and girls living under French colonial rule. A principal resource is a series of 18 reports from Denise Moran Savineau to French West Africa Governor General Jules Marcel de Coppet, which the archives project has made freely available in both the original French and in English translation with annotations.
