Megan Brown is a historian of Modern Europe with a focus on 20th-century France, European integration, and empire. Her teaching and research interests include post-World War II politics, decolonization, the history of France and Algeria, and questions of citizenship. Her book, The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community (Harvard University Press, 2022), interrogates the role of empire in the formation of integrated post-1945 European institutions (European Coal and Steel Community; European Economic Community; and more). This project examines how and why current notions of “Europe” and European identity emerged and what other possible forms of integration were debated and planned following World War II, particularly as France’s empire began to shrink.

Professor Brown received her PhD in History from the Graduate Center, CUNY. At Swarthmore, she teaches surveys of Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries and a variety of courses on topics including postwar Western Europe, the French Revolution, nationalism, and settler colonialism. She is interested in engaging students in the digital humanities, including projects like Holidays in the Empire for her upper-division course on tourism. Professor Brown is a former Fulbright Scholar to France and her writing has been published in Modern & Contemporary France and French Politics, Culture & Society.

Beyond her work on empire and European integration, Professor Brown is also engaged in research about both automobile tourism and a French scandal known as les Ballets roses.