Our Fellows
SEBASTIEN LEDOUX (Université de Paris 1-Panthéon Sorbonne), PhD STUDENT IN HISTORY AND JUNIOR FELLOW OF OUR CENTER (MAI-JUNE 2012)
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Sébastien LEDOUX is a doctoral candidate in history at the Université of Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne) and is affiliated with the « Centre d’Histoire sociale du XXe siècle ». He began his research studying memory issues in education, examining specifically how children are taught the history of slavery in France. His PhD traces the history of the expression "devoir de mémoire" ("duty to remember"). He searches for the origin of this expression, then examines how it changes and progressively takes on new associations as it is used by different people, relating to different memory issues that French society has been dealing with for the last thirty years (those relating to topics such as the Holocaust, the Vichy Regime, WWI, the War of Algeria, and slavery, among others). Sébastien Ledoux seeks to describe the socio-historic context in which the term emerged and then entered into different kinds of discourse (government, media, scholarly, and activist). He also explores new discursive practices concerning the term "mémoire" ("memory"), used by a diversifying field of people through the 1970s and 1980s. He is also interested in the use of the term "devoir de mémoire" as a semantic tool and a mobilizing strategy by those who want a certain memory to be recognized (such as the State, the media, or diverse social groups). Sébastien Ledoux takes a transdisciplinary approach, including concepts from the sociology of memory, public policy, linguistics, and analysis of discourse. By analyzing the history of the "devoir de mémoire" in this manner, Ledoux's dissertation hopes to contribute to historicizing the phenomenon of memory in modern society, from a French perspective. He has already published a book on the subject, Le "devoir de mémoire" à l’école. Essai d’écriture d’un nouveau roman national, (Sarrebruck, Éditions Universitaires européennes, 2011) and several articles, including "Pour une généalogie du 'devoir de mémoire' en France," (Centre Alberto Benveniste, EPHE-Sorbonne, 2009), as well as, soon to be published, "Le 'devoir de mémoire, fabrique du postcolonial? Retour sur la genèse de la 'loi Taubira,'" (Cahiers d’histoire (118), 2012), and "Écrire une histoire du 'devoir de mémoire'", (Le Débat, septembre 2012). |
REMI KORMAN (EHESS), PhD STUDENT IN HISTORY AND JUNIOR FELLOW OF OUR CENTER (JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2012)
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Our center is happy to welcome Remi KORMAN, our CNRS-NYU Junior Fellow, January-February 2012. Remi is a doctoral candidate in history at EHESS, Paris. His PhD focuses on the politics of memory of the Tutsi genocide and more particularly on memorials. His research is funded by the "Fondation pour la mémoire de la Shoah" (Foundation for the memory of the Holocaust, Paris) and is supervised by Professor Stephane Audoin-Rouzeau. Remi Korman has undertaken over two years of field research in Rwanda, working mainly on the archives of a commission in charge of the memory of the genocide; the National commission of fight against the genocide. He has carried out interviews with key actors of the process of memorialization. In the context of his PhD, he has also developed a strong interest in preserving the archives of the genocide. In order to promote the knowledge related to these places of memory and places of knowledge, he recently set up the following website: www.rwanda.hypotheses.org. His work during the "Memory and Memorialization" fellowship will focus on the internationalization of the memory of the Tutsi genocide – memorials have actually already been created in Ouganda, Belgium and France. Two more significant projects are being discussed, in London and at the headquarters of the African Union in Addis-Abeba. |
RENAUD HOURCADE (UNIVERSITE DE RENNES 1), PhD STUDENT IN POLITICAL SCIENCE AND JUNIOR FELLOW OF OUR CENTER (JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2012)
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Our center is happy to welcome Renaud HOURCADE, our CNRS-NYU Junior Fellow, January-February 2012. Renaud is a doctoral candidate in political science (Université de Rennes 1 – France) and a member of the Centre de Recherches sur l’Action politique en Europe, at Sciences Po Rennes. In 2010, he was visiting fellow at the Center for the Study of International Slavery, University of Liverpool. Renaud holds a MA degree in cultural policies (Université de La Rochelle) and studied regional governance as his pre-doctoral research at Sciences Po Rennes. He is now completing a doctoral thesis on the politics of memory related to slavery. His research aims at analyzing the construction of collective memory from the point of view of the societies that initiated the transatlantic slave trade. In this context, Renaud has carried out fieldwork in three former slave-trade ports: Nantes (France), Bordeaux (France) and Liverpool (U-K). Using analytical tools from the sociology of memory and political sociology, the thesis tries to describe and explain the recent rise of the public memory of the slave trade in these cities, embodied in the multiplication of public ceremonies, museums and memorials. The research highlights how national ideological contexts related to the definitions of national identity and race relations shape the way history is interpreted in these cities. But it also stresses the influence exerted by the local context of social and political relations, both on the mobilization of memory entrepreneurs and on how the local ‘official’ memory is framed. Renaud’s interests include social processes of memorialization, policies of memory, identity and race relations. He has written a paper dealing with minority mobilizations in Emulations n°8 (2011), a reading commentary about political science and memory in the Revue Française de Science Politique n°61-2 (2011), and he’s the author of one chapter in Ana Lucia Araujo (ed.) Politics of Memory. Making Slavery Visible in the Public Space, to be published by Routledge in april 2012.
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CLARA DUTERME (UNIVERSITE DE TOULOUSE), PhD STUDENT IN SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND JUNIOR FELLOW OF OUR CENTER (FEBRUARY 2012)
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Our center is happy to welcome Clara DUTERME. Clara is a Ph.D. student in Social Anthropology at the University of Toulouse (France). She was born in Liege (Belgium), where she completed her secondary education, graduating in the Humanities. She then studied in France, at the University of Toulouse Le Mirail, achieving first a Licence, then a Master degree in Ethnology and Social Anthropology, with a focus on Latin American studies, ethnicity and tourism. Her doctoral research is focused on the memories of the internal armed conflict in Guatemala, through the testimonials and narratives of Ixil widows and ex-guerillas, as given in two locals cultural tours. Her interests include memory of violence, ethnic identity, economic relations between Westerns and locals and political discourses at the local, national and international levels. In the course of her ongoing doctoral research, she has spend close to two years living and conducting ethnographic fieldwork in Guatemala, focusing on the construction of ethnic identities and memories of war through cultural tourism. She is also a member of ATRIA (Association for Interdisciplinary Research on the Americas in Toulouse) which gathers post-gratuate students and junior researchers.
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LAURE BERENI (CNRS), ASSOCIATE RESEARCH PROFESSOR IN SOCIOLOGY AND FELLOW OF OUR CENTER (2011-)
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Our center is happy to welcome
Laure BERENI. Laure is a CNRS Research Associate Professor in sociology, affiliated to the Centre Maurice Halbwachs, a Research Center co-sponsored by the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. Before joining the CNRS, she was an assistant professor/faculty fellow at the Institute of French Studies, NYU (2009-2011). Laure is primarily interested in the study of women’s movements and feminism, gender and political representation, and antidiscrimination and ‘diversity’ policies in the workplace. In her PhD in political sociology, completed at the Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1) in 2007, she studied the campaign for gender parity in political representation in France. She found that the 2000 parity reform, imposing an equal presence of women and men on electoral lists, resulted from a wide array of women’s mobilizations arising in a plurality of social spheres, not only in the realm of autonomous civic organizations, but also within political parties and elected assemblies, inside the State, and in the academia. Drawing on this study, she built the concept of ‘field of women’s advocacy’ to convey the transversal dimension of contemporary women’s collective struggles. She recently started a research project on ‘diversity and inclusion’ initiatives in the workplace in the United States and in France. This research examines how diversity norms and practices relate to antidiscrimination laws and policies, and explores the professional culture of diversity practitioners in both countries. Laure has published in major sociology and political science journals, including the Revue Française de Science politique, Politix, Genèses, and French Politics. She co-authored a French handbook of gender studies (Introduction aux gender studies, de Boeck ed., 2008, with S. Chauvin, A. Jaunait and A. Revillard). The book drawing from her dissertation, Histoire sociale de la parité, is forthcoming in 2013 (with Economica). Personnal webpage : http://cnrs.academia.edu/LaureBereni/About
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VIRGINIE BABY-COLLIN (Univ. Aix Marseiie), ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR IN GEOGRAPHY & CNRS RESEARCH FELLOW (2010-2012)
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Virginie BABY-COLLIN is one of our CNRS Research Fellow for 2011-2012. Virginie is a geographer and an Associate Professor of Geography, University of Provence, where she is a member of the CNRS Research Center "Telemme". As an alumna of the Ecole Normale Supérieure Fontenay St Cloud, she completed a PhD in urban geography of Latin America at the University of Toulouse le Mirail (2000). She is an Associate Professor in the department of geography and planning, at the University of Provence (Aix Marseille), since 2004. In Aix en Provence, she coordonates a research program on Migrations and territories in the Mediterranean (MIMED). Between 2010 & 2011, she was a Visiting scholar at Columbia University. Her research in urban comparative geography of Latin America has expanded to the study of Latin American immigration in Southern Europe (Spain and France), and more recently in the New York metropolitan area. Her main topics of research are international migration issues, socio-spatial segregation patterns, integration and transnational ways of life, fragmentation and cosmopolitanism, in metropolitan contexts, and mostly among Latin American immigrants. Among her recent publications, the coedition of various books : La famille transnationale dans tous ses états (2011, Autrepart, Presses de sciences Po), Cuando México enfrenta la globalización. La zona metropolitana de Monterrey, (2010, UANL, Plaza y Valdez editores), Migrations et territoires de la mobilité dans l’espace méditerranéen (2009, Méditerranée), Migrants des Suds (2009, IRD-PUM). |
FELICITY BODENSTEIN (Univ. Paris IV), CNRS NYU JUNIOR RESEARCH FELLOW IN ART HISTORY (OCTOBER.-NOVEMBER 2011)
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Felicity BODENSTEIN was our CNRS NYU Research Fellow in Art History for October & November. Felicity is a doctoral candidate in art history at the Université Paris IV-Sorbonne. Her Phd topic is the history of the Cabinet des médailles et antiques à la Bibliothèque nationale de France de 1819 à 1924 (under the direction of professor Barthélémy Jobert). In 2009-2010 she was a research fellow at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. She is currently working as a research assistant on the EuNaMus project: European National Museums: Identity Politics, the Uses of the Past and the European Citizen at the university of Paris Panthéon-Sorbonne with professor Dominique Poulot. In this context she has undertaken field research on the representation of Napoleon in European museums in order to gauge how the museum constructed a master narrative of the great man that has considerably changed in recent years. Her work at NYU where she is a fellow with the “Memory and Memorialization : Representing Trauma and War” project will try and establish how the memory of Napoleon as read through museographical installations and traditions in the museum (and most especially in national military museums) has been revised in the context of the commemorations of the bicentenary of the Napoleonic wars. Alongside the traditional narrative of the great man – multiple actors of the wars have made their appearance in the museum, reflecting new attitudes to war and the attention given to the notion of suffering and individual experience. In relation to this her main focus is on the agency of objects having belonged to the figure of a great man but also to more anonymous players of this history. It would seem that the emotional power of these objects is key to understanding the difference between an historical reconstruction of events and the memorial experience that lies somewhere between the informative value of an historical object and the aura of the relic. Her stay is sponsored by the Partner University Fund. |
SID KOUIDER (CNRS/ENS PARIS), CNRS RESEARCH FELLOW IN PSYCHOLOGY AND COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE (NOVEMBER 2011)
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Our center is happy to welcome Sid KOUIDER. Sid is a CNRS Associate Professor in Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience. He is the head of the Brain and Consciousness group at the Ecole Normale Supèrieure in Paris. He completed a PhD in cognitive science at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Science Sociales (2002) on the role of consciousness during language perception. He then performed two post-docs. The first one in Harvard University on the development of linguistic and conceptual abilities in infants, and the second one at the INSERM in Orsay on brain imaging and consciousness. Since 2005, he has held a permanent CNRS researcher position and he has been working at the Ecole Normale Supèrieure in Paris. Sid Kouider is working on the neurobiological and psychological foundations of consciousness. He is mainly interested in how conscious and unconscious processes differ at both the psychological and neural level. He uses various behavioral and brain imaging methods (e.g., fMRI and EEG/MEG) to study how humans process things unconsciously (e.g., such as in situations of subliminal perception) and compare it to situations of conscious processing. This approach offers the opportunity to understand thefunctional and physiological specificity of consciousness and, ultimately, why we need both conscious and unconscious processing. He received the 2007 William James prize and the 2010 CNRS bronze medal for his early carrier achievements. |
