Obituary for Professor Agnès Alexandre-Collier

With great sadness, I am heavy-hearted to write that our fine academic colleague and my dear friend Professor Agnès Alexandre-Collier died on Sunday 24 August 2025, following an illness. Agnès was an active member of the PSA, with a special interest in British Politics and Conservatism. During the five years I led the Conservatism Studies Specialist Group, and beyond, Agnès was a dynamic member, dedicated contributor, outstanding colleague and an inspiration. Agnès actively supported our agenda to make the group a more inclusive and diverse academic community, especially for women.

Professor of British Civilisation at the University of Burgundy, Agnès published an extraordinarily long list of publications, spanning many decades, which showcase her sharp and intellectually rigorous command of British politics, Euroscepticism, Brexit, the Tories, and the United Kingdom’s evolving place in the wider world. Some examples of Professor Alexandre-Collier’s work include: Euroscepticism under Margaret Thatcher and David Cameron: from theory to practice (2015); David Cameron, Boris Johnson and the ‘populist hypothesis’ in the British Conservative Party (2022); Identity Divide (s) in post-Brexit Britain (et al., 2024); and Ethnic minority MPs, Conservative Party modernisation, and post-Brexit narratives of Global Britain (et al., 2025). Multilingual, Agnès published extensively in both English and French. The aforementioned examples are but a drop in the ocean of her extensive contributions to the literature.

In August 2024, exactly a year before her passing, I was fortunate to spend time with Agnès and her dear family at their home in Dijon, France. One thing I will always remember from our chats in her kitchen is Agnès’s forthright pride about being, in her own words, “an Anglophile”. 

Agnès was fascinated by the UK and, much to my surprise and disagreement, was ardent in her belief that France could learn a lot from the British approach to several aspects of life, culture and politics. Agnès’s fondness for Britain was symbolised by her time spent, between 2018 and 2020, at Maison Française d’Oxford and Pembroke College, University of Oxford.

Agnès and her family enjoyed the richness of her academic secondment in Oxford. Agnès generously presented opportunities to me and several other scholars to benefit from her time there, for example, encouraging us to give lectures to esteemed Oxford academics. But my favourite memory of Agnès is seeing how her face simply lit up while reminiscing about her time in Oxford, which was partly during the days of the Covid pandemic. For Agnès, it was a special time spent enjoying the fond peculiarities of British life with her beloved children and husband Rémy, who survive her.

Agnès was not only adored by her family, friends and colleagues, but also the many students she touched over her many years of teaching. I witnessed this first hand when she invited me to contribute to a British Politics seminar series at the University of Burgundy, Dijon. I remember feeling overwhelmed by the respect and admiration the students gave her. I have had some of Agnès’s students reach out to me to express their grief at the deep loss of Agnès passing.

Agnès touched so many lives. She was both a brilliant scholar and a brilliant human. Those lives Agnès touched, were left feeling special and acknowledged. Agnès was a shining light and example of how to contribute to making the academy, our universities, our scholarly outputs and the world a better place. It has been said about Agnès that she was deeply committed to collective life in the academic community. From personal experience, I can testify that Agnès was a true exemplar of it.

Agnès is a significant loss and will be deeply missed by all who knew her. On behalf of the PSA, the Conservatism Studies Specialist Group, and our wider community, I would like to extend deepest condolences to all those who knew Agnès - in particular her three children and husband, Rémy.