Staff profile

Ash Percival-Borley is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at Durham University. Her research forms part of the Leverhulme Trust-funded project SOE, Covert Action and the British Cultural Imaginary.

Her doctoral thesis, Oral History, the British Cultural Imaginary, and the Lives of the SOE’s Amateur Agents, explores how former operatives of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) remembered their wartime experiences, and how these recollections intersect with cultural narratives of heroism, amateurism, and secrecy. She draws on interdisciplinary approaches from oral history, cultural studies, gender studies, and memory studies to examine how covert action is represented and remembered.

Ash specialises in 20th-century British intelligence history, oral history methodologies, and gendered perspectives on wartime espionage. She is a member of the Imperial War Museums’ War and Conflict Subject Specialist Network and was named a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker for 2025.

Before entering academia, Ash served in the British Army for thirteen years as a combat medic, recruit instructor, chemical warfare instructor, range management officer, and Regimental Training Senior. She holds a BA in Leadership and Management from Northumbria University, an MA in War, Culture and Society from the University of Essex, and a PGCE with QTS in History from the University of Greenwich.

Her book review of Women in Intelligence: The Hidden History of Two World Wars by Helen Fry and Her Secret Service: The Forgotten Women of British Intelligence by Claire Hubbard‑Hall was published in the Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism in 2025.