Presentation Synopsis
Christine Morrow was born in Kalgoorlie, studied French at UWA and taught French in various schools in WA before going to France to study just before the outbreak of World War II. In June 1940, she managed to escape from the occupied north of France. She completed her doctorate at the Université de Toulouse in 1941 and returned to Australia, via London, in 1942. She taught in the French Department at UWA from 1947 until her retirement in 1969, returning only once to France, in 1954.
The story of her escape from beautiful Agon on the Normandy coast in newly occupied France to Manciet and then to Toulouse in the unoccupied zone is not one of high drama and Resistance heroics, but of quiet determination and courage. It is also the story of a uniquely complex and demanding post-graduate experience and of a present day international academic collaboration. It gives us an insight into an Australian’s love affair with France, an experience which radically changed and enriched her life.
About the Speaker
Born in Queensland, Dr Robin Adamson studied French at the University of Queensland and then in Paris before coming to work in the French Department at UWA. It was here that she met Christine Morrow. After 33 years in Scotland where she was head of languages at the University of Dundee, she returned with her husband to WA in 2001. She is a Senior Honorary Research Fellow in European Languages and Studies where her research centres mainly on the French language.
(Anyone who knew Christine Morrow, Dorothy Clarke, or Frank & Connie Jones please contact the speaker Robin Adamson on,
[email protected]).
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