Marie Delisle is a doctoral student at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), in the Territoires, Migrations, Développement doctoral program, co-directed by Nicolas Verdier and Lucie K. Morisset (UQAM). Trained as a geographer, her thesis focuses on the place of women in maritime and working-class heritage. She is interested in the recent reappearance and valorization of a heritage in port cities in France and England.
Project statement: Dockside work, forgotten work? The place of women in maritime and working-class heritage.
This thesis project examines how women’s working-class memories of the maritime sector are spatially inscribed in France and England. It focuses in particular on the figures of the Penn sardin in Douarnenez and the Herring girls in North Shields and Whitby, and their place in the officially commemorated collective heritage. These two cases offer an opportunity to grasp the ongoing strategies for valorizing this heritage, based on four main objects of study: odonyms and commemorative plaques, statues, and the memorial and tourist itineraries celebrating them. Implemented since the 2000s, these initiatives are disrupting a hitherto stable system that has valued a male heritage almost exclusively. While women have played a crucial role in the fishing industry, alongside men at sea, the places dedicated to the memory of these women workers were initially neglected or even erased. This is particularly true of canneries. This process of disruption will be examined through a cross-viewpoint analysis. This work will question the context of these matrimonialization processes, their spatiality, as well as their reception by local residents and the associated identity issues. This project aims to understand how the valorization of heritage transforms the logics of production of collective heritage, and reinforces the maritime identity of these territories.
