Ruth Murphy is a post-doctoral scholar working on the history and memory of Allied prisoners of war in Italy.

Her PhD at the University of Cambridge was entitled ‘Ethical Vision and Bifocal Writing in the Twentieth Century: Primo Levi, Hannah Arendt, James Baldwin’, and was supervised by Professor Robert Gordon. It examined a group of ethical concepts that arose in response to historical events (such as Arendt’s ‘banality of evil’), and theorised the notion of ‘bifocality’: a form of writing able to capture both a particular human story and its universal relevance.

Her current research project looks at the experiences of Allied POWs who escaped from prison camps in Italy during the Second World War. It builds on an archive of POW memoirs and diaries recently bequeathed to the University Library by the Monte San Martino Trust. The book she is writing tells the story of this tumultuous period through an intersection of first-hand accounts: those of the POWs, the local Italians who helped and hid them, and other contemporary points of view.

Alongside this work, Ruth has a strong interest in the relationship between philosophy, literature, and history; 20th century intellectual history, and feminist thought.