We were delighted to confirm, at our 2024 AGM, two new Trustees, both are highly regarded experts in their respective fields:

Professor Hanna Diamond

Hanna is Professor of French History at Cardiff University.  She completed her undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at the University of Sussex where she was awarded a PhD in history in 1992. She taught for several years in Paris Universities and then moved to Bath University in 1993. She took up a chair at Cardiff University in 2014.

Hanna is a cultural and social historian of France and Europe and has published extensively on France during the Second World War and memory of this period.  She has a particular interest in gender and in reconstructing people’s everyday lives during these traumatic events. Her research monographs have dealt with women’s experiences of the Second World War in France (1999) and France in 1940 (2007).

She has worked in an advisory role for with the Musée de la Libération de Paris – musée Leclerc – musée Jean Moulin and co-curated with the museum director, their 2020 exhibition 1940: Les Parisiens dans l’exode/ 1940: Parisians in the exodus .You can read Jon Henley’s feature on it in The Guardian and our short film of the exhibition here.

She secured a 2-year Leverhulme Fellowship (2021-2023) to work on the wartime activities of international star Josephine Baker. You can read an article on the topic here and Hanna’s book ‘Josephine Baker’s war’ is due to appear in 2025.

Diamond mobilises a variety of sources for her research including oral and written testimony and is interested in how these sources can contribute to conveying the past in various cultural mediums including museum exhibitions, radio and film. In relation to digital testimony, she developed an interactive website (http://www.fleeinghitler.org/) to enable people to post family stories of their experiences of Occupied Europe during the Second World War.

She collaborates with a number of non-academic partners in the UK and abroad including professionals in the creative industries (radio, podcast, television, film and theatre directors, producers and script-writers) and in the curatorial sector in the UK and France. In particular, she has recently worked with Adonde Media, Noiser, and Woodcutter Media among others.

 

Colonel (ret’d) Nick Fox OBE

Nick entered the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in 1976, was commissioned into the Parachute Regiment in 1977 and transferred to the Intelligence Corps in late 1978 following an infantry tour in Northern Ireland. He has direct operational experience as an “Intelligencer” of the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the break-up of Yugoslavia, and post 9-11 operations. He was involved in intelligence, security and counter-intelligence activity at all levels of command, supporting war-fighting, peace-keeping, peace-enforcement, counter-insurgency and counter-terrorist operations. Service included tours in GB, NI, USA, Germany, Cyprus and the Balkans and command of a Joint Service Counter-terrorism (CT) unit. He served as a Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff J2 in the UK’s Permanent Joint HQ, providing intelligence support to operations under the Chief of Joint Operations, and retired from the Army in 2004 as a Colonel commanding 1 Military Intelligence Brigade.

Nick then spent 10 years in national law enforcement agencies, involved mainly in covert operations. He retired in 2014 as a senior officer in the National Crime Agency (NCA), as Head of the Anti-Corruption Unit and a Strategic Firearms Commander. Nick is a graduate of the Army Command and Staff Course, Camberley and the Police Strategic Command Course, Bramshill.  He was appointed MBE in 1994 and OBE in 2000 for operational service. From 2018 until 2022 he served as the Deputy Colonel Commandant of the Intelligence Corps.

Nick is now a military historian specialising in the Special Operations Executive, and intelligence and security matters in WW2 and the Cold War. He has been involved in Battlefield Studies and Tours on these themes, and has been consulted by several authors, TV and film companies, as well as giving presentations and talks to a variety of audiences, including military units. He has participated in the annual F Section SOE commemoration at Valençay for the last 20 years and is also a Trustee of  our partner association in France – ‘Libre Resistance’.