Dr Paola Filippucci

I am proud of the College’s history and vocation as a space not only reserved for women in Cambridge and in higher education, but made for them. I feel that the College’s history gives it a very particular, somewhat off-centre perspective on the wider University, which I find very congenial, refreshing and empowering. I also like the balance between old and new: we have enough history to cherish it, but not enough to stifle transformation, and innovation and forward-thinking

Degrees and honours

• BA (Hons), University of Sheffield (Prehistory and Archaeology)
• M.Phil
• PhD University of Cambridge (Social Anthropology).

Awards and prizes

• Cambridge University Student-Led Teaching Awards (for outstanding pastoral care as a Tutor), 2015.
• Willey Prize, Sheffield University, 1985.
• Medieval History Prize, Sheffield University, 1983.  

Research interests

My research focuses on landscapes affected by war destruction. As a social anthropologist, I study this ethnographically, through documenting and analysing perceptions and practices of those who visit or inhabit landscapes devastated by war, in the aftermath of armed conflict. At the core of my research is also the memory of war, and the way former battlefields are curated as sites of commemoration and heritage. The main focus of my ethnographic research the former Western Front, theatre of some of the most devastating fighting during the Great War (1914-’18). My particular interest is in analysing how memory and commemoration evolve as a conflict recedes into the past and over the long term, and the role of traces and vestiges of war in this process. I am centrally interested in understanding how those who inhabit or visit former battlefields respond to tangible vestiges of war in the physical surroundings of a place, and on how their understandings of landscape and place are shaped and influenced by this: for example by the burden of negative memories associated with war monuments, burials and memorials. My research treats the mass destruction of places as a way to weaponise landscape to harm populations, and demonstrates the very long-term impact of mass destruction caused by war on the way people approach, experience and inhabit places, affecting identity over the long term, in spite of physical reconstruction. This has significant implications for our understanding of post-conflict reconstruction and identity formation in the case of conflicts across the globe, and of the many regions of the world that continue to be subject to extreme violence and destruction.

My research on conflict landscapes combines ethnographic methodologies with an interest in archaeology. For several years I took part in excavations of sites on the former Western Front as a member of No Man’s Land, a group specialising on Great War archaeology in Europe and in the UK, whose work centrally aimed at involving local communities in excavation and appreciating their war-related heritage. This led me to investigate how local (collective and individual) memories of war emerge in response to excavation and to the occasional discovery of the bodies of victims. This aspect of my research also seeks to understand the memorial role of the war dead for individuals, families and communities in the 21st century; and the importance of archaeology (and its finds) in how we access and evoke the past – and war-related pasts in particular - in the 21st century.

Biography

After completing my degrees at the Universities of Sheffield and Cambridge, I became a Junior Research Fellow of Murray Edwards College (then New Hall), and later a Fellow of the College. I worked as a University Teaching Officer for 5 years in the Department of Social Anthropology before being appointed to a College Lectureship at New Hall/Murray Edwards in 2005. In College I am one of the Directors of Studies in Human, Social and Political Sciences (and formerly in Archaeology and Anthropology). I am also an undergraduate Tutor and I have been a member of a range of College committees including the College Council. I was also Deputy Senior Tutor (2017-2023) and have held several other roles in College, most recently that of Acting Vice-President (May-September 2025).