Biography

I conducted my PhD research at the Sorbonne from 2009 to 2014, earning my PhD in late modern history in June 2014. In 2011-2012, I was a visiting student at King’s College London and in 2012-2013 a visiting student in the History Faculty of Cambridge University and a Knox Student of Trinity College.
Based on archives located in Britain, in India, in France and in the UAE, my dissertation, ‘The Birth of the Middle East. The British in the Arabo-Persian Gulf, (c. 1800-c. 1914)’, is a comprehensive study of the Persian Gulf’s involvement in various ‘space- systems’ – politico-administrative, economic, regional, and global. It seeks to contribute to the understanding of British and Anglo-Indian imperialism in the Gulf in the 19th century and reveals the politico-administrative and geo-symbolic creation of a space, the Gulf. It also emphasizes, by examining various flows of products, the insertion of the Gulf into different economic areas, both at a regional and global level. I have turned this research into a book that will be published in October 2015 by Champvallon, Genèses du Moyen-Orient. Le Golfe Persique à l’âge des impérialismes. (c. 1800 - c. 1914).
While at the EUI, I began a new project on the links between oil exploration and exploitation and imperialism in the Middle East in the first half of the 20th century.
Since 2008, I have taught undergraduate and graduates courses at the Sorbonne, at Sciences Po Paris and at Sciences Po International Summer School. Topics have included British Imperialism in the 19 and 20th centuries, Modern European and French History, History of the European Union and Comparative History of Europe and Asia in the 19th century.