Conor Muller

conor.muller@history.ox.ac.uk

Research Topic: Migration Control and the State in Britain and France, 1800–15

My doctoral research studies the control of international migration by the state during the revolutionary period from 1800. Focusing on British, French, and colonial (Jamaican) approaches, I show how European states developed the administrative and bureaucratic capacities to control the international mobility of people by giving force to admissibility criteria established in law. These could be contested by social and economic groups, institutions within the state, and migrants and travellers themselves – migration became both an object of governance and a subject of politics at a time when revolutionary change was driving large-scale movements of people across borders and oceans. Incorporating questions of political economy, race, industrial change, and social conflict, my project aims to asks why and on whose terms – rather than just how – states began to control international migration in a 'modern' way.

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, and I was a visiting doctoral student at the Sciences Po Centre for History in Paris. My doctoral research is fully funded by the Oxford-Sir Colin R. Lucas Studentship in French History.

Bluesky: @conormuller.bsky.social

Awards & funding

• Beit Fund Research Grant, University of Oxford, 2024–25 and 2025–26.
• 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
• Various smaller college and department grants.

Publications

• 'The Scottish Martyrs, Scotland and Internationalism in Revolutionary France, 1794–99', French History (2026), https://doi.org/10.1093/fh/crag017.
• 'Les Britanniques sous surveillance', Fenêtre sur Tour 34 (2025), 18–19, Archives départementales de la Seine-Maritime, https://www.archivesdepartementales76.net/data/bat_hd_fstn_34_low.pdf.
• 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 69, no. 3 (2024), 517–20. doi.org/10.1017/S0020859024000920.

Talks and seminar presentations

• ‘Colonial Aliens Law and Summary Deportation in Jamaica during the French Revolutionary Wars’, Empires and War Conference, Dublin, 17 September 2026.
• ‘French Merchant Shipping and the Policing of the Outer European Border, 1802–14’, Lines That Cross: Migration and the Making of a European Space, Giessen, Germany, 2 July 2026.
• 'Resistance and Challenges to Border Surveillance and Cross-Channel Migration Controls in France, 1802–1815', Global Consortium for French Historical Studies Conference, Paris, 18 July 2025.
• 'British Manufacturers in France and the Political Economy of Displacement', Displacement and the French Revolution Workshop, University College London, 29 May 2025. Also given at the Sciences Po Centre for History Seminar, 26 May 2025.
• '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

• [OS 15] Haiti and Louisiana: The Problem of Revolution in the Age of Slavery
• The Long European 19th Century, 1780–1914: Revolutions, Modernity, and Rise to Power (Sciences Po, Reims)
• Balliol College Floreat Access Programme in the Humanities:
• The French Revolution, 1789
• Protest against the Cold War in Europe, 1956–91
• History Faculty PLTO

Events organised

• 'Invisible Actors in the Making of International Law (1750–2000)' – Sciences Po Paris, 27–28 November 2025, https://doi.org/10.58079/152kp.

Key words

Migration; smuggling; people trafficking; deportation; displacement; borders; policing.

Languages

English (native)

French (near fluent)

German, Spanish (B2)

Supervisor: Simon Skinner & Erica Charters