Conor Muller
Bluesky: @conormuller.bsky.social
Research Topic
Challenges to Migration Control in Britain and France, 1802–15: A Comparative Approach
My research interests are broad, spanning Britain, France and their respective Atlantic colonies in the Revolutionary period. My thesis explores state attempts to regulate, restrict, or prevent the mobility of people in this period using legal, military, and political measures. I am particularly interested in how these measures were circumvented or undermined from below by migrants and travellers as well as from above by actors and interests within or close to the state or industry. Comparative in its methodology, my work aims to incorporate questions of colonialism, race, political economy, social conflict, and migrant agency into the history of the control of migration and mobility. I hope to suggest that the establishment of infrastructure to surveil borders and discipline and order the people who crossed them was contested, even amid the political polarisation generated by Anglo-French conflict.
Before coming to Oxford to start my doctorate in October 2023, I earned an MPhil in Modern British History with distinction from the University of Cambridge, funded by St Catharine's College. I previously studied as an undergraduate at the Universities of York and Pennsylvania. My doctoral studies are fully funded by the Oxford-Sir Colin R. Lucas Studentship in French History at Balliol College.
I am currently a visiting researcher at the Sciences Po Centre for History in Paris.
Awards & funding
Beit Fund Research Grant, University of Oxford, 2024–25
Oxford-Sir Colin R. Lucas Studentship in French History, Balliol College and University of Oxford, 2023–26
Postgraduate History Bursary, St Catharine's College, Cambridge, 2021
US Alumni Connections Award (for University of Pennsylvania), University of York, 2019
Publications
Review of Mobility and Coercion in an Age of Wars and Revolutions, edited by Jan C. Jansen and Kirsten McKenzie, International Review of Social History (2024). doi.org/10.1017/S0020859024000920.
Talks and seminar presentations
'Enforcing and Evading Migration Law on the Southern English Coast', Law and Diversity in European History, Graduate Conference in European History, University of Vienna, 9 April 2025.
'The Scottish Martyrs in Jacobin France, 1793–94: Recognition, Universalism, and National Hatred', Long Eighteenth Century Workshop, University of Cambridge, 19 November 2024.
'Deportation and Repatriation from Britain and France at War, 1789–1819', Global & Imperial History Seminar, University of Oxford, 1 March 2024.
Teaching
- Balliol College Floreat Access Programme in the Humanities:
- The French Revolution, 1789
- Protest against the Cold War in Europe, 1956–91
- History Faculty PLTO
Key words
Migration, smuggling, people trafficking, deportation, displacement,
Languages
English (native)
French (near fluent)
German, Spanish (beginner)
Supervisor: Erica Charters
