Personal profile
Research interests
My current research focuses on the history of sport and sports writing (particularly print journalism in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries). I am the co-editor of Sport and the Pursuit of War and Peace from the Nineteenth Century to the Present with Philip Dine. I am currently writing a book provisionally titled French Cycling and Print Journalism: The Making of a Sport Culture which investigates the history of French cycling via its textual representation, particularly in sports journalism, biography and auto-biography. I am also co-investigator on the British Academy-funded project 'Gender Injustice in Action Sports'.
I am also expert in understanding the relationship between representations of conflict and politics in early twentieth-century France. I am the author of Novelists in Conflict: Ideology and the Absurd in the French Combat Novel of the Great War and France and the Spanish Civil War: Cultural Representations of the War next Door, 1936-1945. With Martyn Cornick and Angela Kershaw, I have recently written French Political Travel Writing in the Inter-War Years: Radical Departures. I am also interested in the relationship between political commitment and utopianism and the memory of the First World War in twentieth-century French culture. I am one of the editors of the Journal of War and Culture Studies. In addition to this, I also have an interest in French crime fiction, particularly the novels of Sébastien Japrisot.
Research Groups and Themes
- Cabot Institute City Futures Research
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Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years
Research output
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Between the Sheets: Sexuality, Classified Advertising, and the Moral Threat to Press Freedom in France. By HANNAH FRYDMAN. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2025. xi + 317, ill.
Hurcombe, M. J., 30 Mar 2026, In: French Studies. 80, 2, p. 362-362 1 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Book/Film/Article review (Academic Journal)
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Bringing Marathon to Paris: The Press and the Promotion of Endurance Running in the Belle Epoque
Hurcombe, M. J., 7 Jan 2025, Sport in Paris: Retracing the Culture of Game and Play in the City of Light (1854-2024). Leconte, M. (ed.). Peter Lang International Academic Publishers, p. 71-92 21 p. (Sport, History and Culture).Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter in a book
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Gearing Up!
Spotswood, F., Kingston, H. & Hurcombe, M. J., 25 Sept 2025, Fusion Media.Research output: Other contribution
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Exploring Bristol-Toulouse Research Synergies in the Arts
Hurcombe, M. J. (Principal Investigator), Kosick, R. (Co-Investigator), Pooley, W. (Co-Investigator) & McQueen, F. J. (Co-Investigator)
20/05/24 → 31/07/28
Project: Research
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Gearing Up! Transformative Marketing Toolkit for Mountain Biking
Spotswood, F. M. (Principal Investigator) & Hurcombe, M. J. (Principal Investigator)
3/03/25 → 30/09/25
Project: Research
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Fostering Inclusive Action Sport in Wales
Spotswood, F. M. (Principal Investigator), Moxey, M. (Co-Investigator) & Hurcombe, M. J. (Co-Investigator)
1/07/24 → 31/07/25
Project: Research
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Activities
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Society for French Studies 63rd annual conference
Hurcombe, M. J. (Participant)
27 Jun 2022Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Participation in conference
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Telling the Story of Sport
Hurcombe, M. J. (Participant)
14 Dec 2020Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Participation in conference
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Writing the Ride: Cycling and the Written Word
Hurcombe, M. J. (Advisor)
8 Nov 2020Activity: Talk or presentation types › Public talk, debate, discussion
Thesis
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Forming the modern mind : a reappraisal of the French combat novel of World War One.
Hurcombe, M. J. (Author), 2000Student thesis: Doctoral Thesis › Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
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