Michèle Barrett is a noted social theorist and a Virginia Woolf scholar. In recent years she has researched the history of commemorative inequalities following the First World War.
Current research projects
War Graves project
During 2020-21 Michèle has been serving as a member of the Special Committee of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission to investigate whether WW1 casualties outside Europe had not been commemorated properly.
This investigation was triggered by a documentary film, shown on Channel 4 in November 2019. Produced by Uplands TV and presented by David Lammy, MP, this documentary brought to the TV screen the research that she had been doing for several years.
On 22nd April 2021, the CWGC published the Committee’s Report acknowledging inconsistent commemoration of the World War 1 dead.
See the film trailer and more details here
WoolfNotes
The digitisation of Virginia Woolf’s reading and research notes brings into the public domain Woolf’s last remaining substantial unpublished work. Her personal reading and research notebooks demonstrate the depth of her historical knowledge and the wide range of her reading, casting new light on both her fiction and critical work. The project will present in a website, WoolfNotes.com, high specification images of approximately 7000 manuscript and typescript pages from the archives of the Monks House Papers in Sussex (UK), the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library, and the Beinecke Library at Yale. These materials are accompanied by reference and interpretative materials; most importantly, the 67 reading notebooks studied by Brenda Silver are presented in juxtaposition with Silver’s authoritative summaries of their contents.
More information about the WoolfNotes project here
