Biography

I am currently finishing my PhD in History at the University of Paris-Sorbonne. It will be submitted by the end of the summer 2014 and defended by the early autumn of the same year.

My PhD dissertation is titled ‘Whitehall and Europe: British senior officials and the unification of Europe, 1949-1979’. It is a social history of British and European politics focusing on the top civil servants in charge of European affairs in Whitehall, as a group of actors who actually influenced and designed the European policy of the United Kingdom in the period considered. This collective biography of the European experts in Whitehall shows to what extent, how and why – or why not – the British Civil Service was only scarcely europeanised in 1979. It also focuses on the first regiments of British officials seconded to serve in top positions in Brussels after 1973.My research is based on public and private written archives, and on interviews conducted with retired officials and diplomats.

Since 2008, I have taught undergraduate courses in Cold War and Modern European History at Paris-Sorbonne; Politics in the EU and Comparative History of Asia and the West at Sciences Po Paris.
As a lecturer, I have taught graduate courses of Diplomatic History of Europe at Paris-Sorbonne, and Modern History of the Arabo-Islamic world at the Ecole Normale Supérieure.

Expertise:
Modern history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, history of the British elites in the twentieth century, history of the European integration process, political sociology of European integration, modern history of Egypt and the Middle East