Simona TOBIA

Simona Tobia is Associate Professor in American Studies at the Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour (UPPA). She obtained her PhD from the Università degli Studi di Milano (Italy) and worked at the University of Reading and University College-UCL, London (UK). She was at the Library of Congress, Washington D.C. as a Kluge Fellow and taught at Université Jean-Jaurès in Toulouse, France before joining UPPA and the research group ALTER in 2019. 

Her field of expertise is twentieth-century War and Culture Studies, the history of international relations, memory studies and oral history. She authored the monographs Advertising America. The United States Information Service in Italy, 1945-1956; Ascoltatori italiani buonasera. Voice of America e l’Italia, 1942-1957 and WarTalk. The role of foreign languages in World War II, with Hilary Footitt. Simona is currently preparing the monograph Name, Rank and Number. Interrogation, Interviewing and Questioning in the Second World War and Its Aftermath (1939-1949). She is one of co-founders and co-editors of the Close Encounters in War Journal.

She co-leads the research project Les Anglophones à Pau. Récits d'une expérience migratoire, co-funded by the Communauté d'agglomération Pau Béarn Pyrénées and UPPA, and participates in the project An International Oral History of the Transition Movement within the Oral History Society (OHS). She is currently the UNITA European consortium representative for the Collège Sciences Sociales et Humaines  and co-chairs the Publication Committee of the Oral History Association (OHA).