Biography

I am a historian of 20 ^th century Europe in a transnational perspective. I research migrants, workers and firms in transnational contexts in order to analyze how rights, practices and notions of citizenship were transformed through colonialism, decolonization and European integration.
My PhD dissertation, ‘From the Mediterranean to Europe: Migrants, the World of Work, and the Transformation of the French Mediterranean, 1945-1974,’ examined migration and migrants’ work in France between the end of World War II and the first oil crisis. Moving beyond bilateral or colonial perspectives, my multinational research analyzed how bureaucrats, employers, and migrants across Europe and the Mediterranean region jointly and dynamically shaped migratory processes.
As a Max Weber Fellow, I am further developing this research on the western Mediterranean as a socially constructed space, where migrants were catalysts of economic transformation, even as they crystallized labour hierarchies and notions of European identity. Other research projects include an analysis of how migration prompted new understandings of the state and welfare in Spain after World War I, as well as business relationships in the late French empire and after decolonization.
I defended my PhD dissertation in April 2014 at the University of Chicago’s Department of History. I have taught at both the University of Chicago and the Institut des Études Politiques-Paris (Sciences Po).