Biography

My research interests are in modern French and modern Jewish history. My doctoral research, titled: ‘Pétain’s Jewish Children: French Jewish Youth and the Vichy Regime’ was undertaken at St Hugh’s College, Oxford where I worked under the supervision of Robert Gildea. In the final year of my doctorate, I was a Scouloudi Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research. My Ph.D. examined the nature of the responses to the Vichy regime by French Jews between the years 1940 and 1942. My research on the specific category of French Jewish youth has revealed significant exceptions to Vichy’s anti-Semitic policies, in which the regime’s desire for a reinvigorated youth and the rebirth of the nation, took precedence over its racial laws.
At Oxford I taught several courses on twentieth-century European history. These included ‘France from the Popular Front to the Liberation’ and ‘Culture Politics and Identity in Cold War Europe’. I also acted as a mentor to students writing extended essays on Vichy France.
As a Max Weber Fellow I intend to examine how Vichy’s anti-Semitic legislation was implemented in a colonial setting. Through a focus on Jewish women, this study will seek to uncover the gendered nature of the Tunisian Jewish experience during the Second World War.
I completed my undergraduate degree, a year of which I spent a year at Sciences-Po, Paris, at the University of Sussex, and began my M.A. at St Hugh’s College in 2006.