Anna Nasser

Anna Nasser is a Deakin postdoctoral fellow in history at the St. Antony’s College (Oxford University) and fellow at the Maison Française d’Oxford, from October 2025 to June 2026. Her current research is on the role of women’s organizations in the process of the decolonisation in the French empire, in particular in France and French West Africa. She specifically focuses on the networks and social rights-related claims developed at the imperial level, and on the influence of women’s networks in influencing French understandings of women’s rights.

Specialised in women’s history as well as global and imperial history, she completed a PhD in Global History and Governance at the Scuola Superiore Meridionale - University of Naples Federico II, in a co-direction with the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales of Paris. She is currently working on her first book, resulting from her dissertation “Our aspirations went beyond our borders.” French Women’s Organizations, Women’s Rights and Empire during Decolonization (1944-1963), defended in October 2024.

She has published articles on French women’s engagement in colonial welfarism, on anticolonial and communist networks and on French colonial efforts in international institutions as the United Nations. Her research interests are related to French colonial and imperial history, history of social rights, women’s and feminist transnational history and decolonization in a comparative perspective.