Anna Nasser is a historian of modern France and the European empires. Specialised in women’s history and imperial history, she holds a PhD in Global History and Governance from the Scuola Superiore Meridionale – University of Naples Federico II. Her PhD focused on the role of women’s organizations in the process of decolonization in the French Empire, particularly in France and French West Africa, and on how they framed transnational, imperial and anti-colonial networks, and promoted social rights for women. For the academic year 2025-2026, she has been the Deakin Fellow at the Maison Française d’Oxford and at the European Studies Centre of St. Antony’s College at the University of Oxford. From 2026 she is an affiliate member of the Faculty of History of the University of Oxford (2026-2028), and a member of the editorial board of Genesis, the journal of the Association of Italian Historians of Women’s and Gender History. Her research interests cover the history of European empires and their colonies in Africa, the history of feminist and women’s internationalisms, the history of social rights.
Her research at KWI aims to investigate the intersection of decolonization processes across three major European empires—France, the United Kingdom, and Belgium—by focusing on how their late imperial policies and reforms influenced specific rights in the metropolitan space between 1945 and 1960. Framed as a comparative and connected history, it questions how the expansion of imperial gendered welfarist and social policies has affected metropolitan understandings of and policies on women’s education, family allowances, and healthcare; the project further analyzes the establishment of modern welfare state systems in Europe, as well as the interconnectedness across imperial experiences, by focusing on women’s groups active in the colonial and metropolitan spaces. In doing so, the project proposes a social and gendered history of decolonization in Europe. It suggests that decolonization in the metropolises can be better understood when conceived as a coproductive process and when focusing on imperial porous borders and the constant exchanges with other imperial spaces.