Elizabeth Shannon

I began my PhD in September 2023 under the supervision of Richard Whatmore and Riccardo Bavaj. My thesis examines George C. Marshall's (1880-1959) involvement in producing and engaging with contemporary histories of the World Wars. Marshall refused to write his memoirs as US Army Chief of Staff after the Second World War, but he was not uninvolved in assembling written histories of it. Nor of the First World War. In the aftermath of both conflicts, he communicated with authors and publishers, reviewed and revised manuscripts, and committed his wartime reminiscences, or allowed them to be committed, to paper.

In 2020, I received a BA in History from Patrick Henry College (Virginia, USA) with Highest Honours and the Award for Outstanding Achievement in History. For the next two years, I worked in classroom and museum education. I undertook the latter at the George C. Marshall International Center in Leesburg, Virginia, where I (unwittingly) began laying the foundations for my doctoral research. I arrived in St Andrews in 2022 for an MLitt in Intellectual History, which I completed the following year with a distinction.