Romain Fathi

Photo: SPA 34M sourced by Romain Fathi

Human Remains

The body as an object of historical investigation has long interested me. My first book, published in 2013, dealt with the representation of living and dead bodies in First World War museums. Since then, I have accumulated primary sources pertaining to bodies at war and in war, in a First World War context in particular. 

More recently, I have started to focus on corpses, as a lens of inquiry to understand aspects of conflicts that remain unexplored. As a historian of commemoration, I have always been puzzled by the gaps that exist between noble and romanticised war commemorations and the ways in which the dead were actually dealt with on the battlefields. 

This interest in the treatment of human remains at war has led me to publish a pioneering article on the Australian Graves Detachment and its role in exhuming and re-burying the war dead after WWI, together with a more recent study on the work of the Australian Graves Services.”

Corpses in wars are a current program of work for me, one in which I conduct pilot research to develop a much wider transnational and multilingual project that would investigate how belligerent states during WWI dealt with the disposal of millions of cadavers. 

The number of corpses to be disposed of in so little time and so little space was an unprecedented phenomenon for European armies that had enforced the mass conscription of their citizens. Corpses represented a significant health concern for they are the vehicles of pathogens. Getting rid of them, even temporarily, became a medical priority.

To develop this investigation, I am currently working on an article about cremation in the military in First World War France. Recently, I was invited by the European PIMo network to discuss my preliminary avenues of investigation on this research (video below):

Photo: The flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Paris. Credits: Romain Fathi

Commemorations

Much of my published work on war commemorations has examined the process of assembly, projection and performance of an aspect of Australian national identity: Anzac and its central role in the national narrative. 

For years, I have collected archives on the Western Front, in France, in Australia, but also in the UK and several other countries to document First World War commemorations and their evolving patterns; how states, communities and people commemorate the First World War, and why they do so in a myriad of different ways.

Over the past few years, I have attempted to internationalise Australia’s First World War history. My latest book Our Corner of the Somme (CUP, 2019) has increased awareness about the shortcomings of monolingual and national(ist) research in studying Australia in the First World War. 

My methodological contribution has been to use French and foreign primary sources to study Australian extraterritorial commemorations of WWI, creating significant new knowledge of a phenomenon previously undocumented: the way Australians and their representatives have staged French gratitude in Australia’s war remembrance.

“South Australians in France”

2017-2019

During the First World War, thousands of South Australian men and women contributed to the war effort in France and on the Western Front.

To mark the centenary of the end of the First World War and to recognise and understand the enduring connections formed between France and South Australia, Dr Fathi, with the support of Flinders University, organised a public event titled South Australians in France.

For over a year, the South Australians in France team engaged with metropolitan and regional South Australians to unearth the extraordinary stories based on the First World War objects that they hold.

The Project culminated in a public event in Adelaide on 23 and 24 February 2018.

The public event, which involved French scholars alongside Australian experts, brought to life the revealing histories of many of the objects held by the South Australian descendants of First World War veterans.