Dr Simon Macdonald

Simon Macdonald is a Lecturer in Modern European History. He works predominantly on transnational and cultural history, with particular focus on the French Revolution. His current book project, Enemies of the Republic: Policing the British in Revolutionary Paris, historicises the idea of a foreign community and of border-crossing lives during a critical point in the formation of both British and French nation states. His larger research revolves around foreigners in revolutionary France, the history of cosmopolitanism, and broader questions of European and global interconnections.

He has previously held research and teaching positions at Queen Mary University of London, Université Paris-VIII, the Institut d’études avancées de Paris, the European University Institute (Max Weber fellowship), and McGill University (Banting fellowship).

Major Publications

• Enemies of the Republic? Policing the British in Revolutionary Paris, book manuscript under review.
• The Letters of The Duchesse d’Elbeuf: Hostile Witness to the French Revolution, co-edited with Colin Jones and Alex Fairfax-Cholmeley, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 2023.
• ‘Made in France? British Women Workers in the Eighteenth-Century Paris Fashion Trades’, in David Garrioch, ed., The Republic of Skill: Artisan Mobility, Innovation, and the Circulation of Knowledge in Premodern Europe, Leiden: Brill, 2022, pp. 246–73.
• Paris et ses peuples au XVIIIe siècle, co-edited with Pascal Bastien, Paris, Éditions de la Sorbonne, 2020.
• ‘Robespierre, the Duke of York, and Pisistratus during the French Revolutionary Terror’, co-authored with Colin Jones, Historical Journal, 61:3 (2018), pp. 643–672. Available open-access as a PDF.
• ‘English-Language Newspapers in Revolutionary France’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 36:1 (2013), pp. 17–33. (Winner of the Bibliographical Society of America’s triennial William L. Mitchell Prize in 2015.)
• ‘Identifying Mrs Meeke: Another Burney Family Novelist’, Review of English Studies, 64:265 (2013), pp. 367–385.
• ‘Transnational History: A Review of Past and Present Scholarship’, UCL Centre for Transnational History, 2013.
• ‘To “Shew Virtue its Own Image”: William Hodges’s The Effects of Peace and The Consequences of War, 1794–1795’, British Art Journal, 9 (2008), pp. 57–66.

Teaching 

• Age of Revolutions: European History 1815–1870 (1st and 2nd year undergraduate survey course)
• A Global History of the French Revolution (3rd year Special Subject and dissertation)
• Research and Writing Skills for the MA in History
• The French Melting Pot? France, Migration and Belonging since 1789 (2nd year Research Seminar)

Simon is currently unable to act as a primary PhD supervisor.

Contact information

Email: simon.macdonald@ucl.ac.uk

Phone: 020 3794 0272 

Office: 402, 23 Gordon Square

Student support & feedback hours: My office hours are drop-ins or please email to book a specific slot.

Term 1 = Wednesdays 4–5pm and Thursdays 10–11am.

Term 2 = Wednesdays 4–5pm and Thursdays 4–5pm. 

Student support & feedback hours are an opportunity for students to chat with their module tutors about their ideas, any support they might need with the module, and to go through feedback from their assessments.