Antoine Burgard

Accepting PhD Students

PhD projects

I am interested in supervising PhD research in history (migration and refugees, humanitarianism, etc.), genocide studies, and youth studies. See ongoing doctoral students below.

Personal profile

Overview

Since January 2020, I am a lecturer in contemporary history of humanitarianism at the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute. I joined HCRI in 2018 as a postdoctoral fellow of the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah in Paris. I hold a History PhD from Université Lumière Lyon 2 and Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). I am currently developing a new project on age in border policing in Britain and France.

Research interests

My research focuses on children in modern situations of war and displacement. My doctoral thesis was a transnational analysis of the resettlement of a group of young Holocaust survivors from Europe to Canada. It retraced the trajectories of these young people and examined the discourses of the various actors (NGOs, immigration agents, health professionals) that participated in their resettlement. This resulted in a history that both shed light on population management and border policing practices and took into consideration the experiences and voices of the young survivors. It has received four best doctoral dissertation awards from the Fondation Auschwitz (2018), the French Association of Canadian Studies (2018), the International Council for Canadian Studies (2019), and the Faculty of Humanities at the Université du Québec À Montréal (2019).

My doctoral research was the starting point of two fully funded two-year projects around border policing, refugeedoom, and childhood. The first was a comparative history of Jewish refugee activism in Britain and Canada in the 1940s and 1950s funded by the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah in Paris. The second was an in-depth analysis (including the collection of twenty testimonies) of how Holocaust child-survivors narrate their post-war journeys. This project was funded by the Fondation Claude Levy in Strasbourg and resulted in a teaching toolkit for highschool students on Jewish children during the Holocaust.

My ongoing project aims at producing the first history of age and border control and providing historical context to current discussions surrounding the arrival of young migrants in Europe. It brings together a history of expert knowledge (how assessment techniques were developed and implemented in border policing) and a history from below (how young people themselves experienced having their age assessed).

Supervision information

I am open to discuss doctoral and post-doctoral projects around children and young people in situations of conflict and displacement, history of migration and refugees, and genocides.

I am currently co-supervising:

Since 2021: Panagiotis Karagkounis, HCRI-funded PhD, ‘Forced Resettlement, Humanitarianism and the “Logic of Development”: The Greek case and the Near East, 1920s-1950s’.

Since 2021: Niamh Hanrahan, HCRI-funded PhD, ‘An Asian refugee crisis? Humanitarian relief of Jewish refugees in Hong Kong, Kobe, Manila and Surabaya (1931-1953)’.

Since 2023: Charlotte Doggett, ESRC-funded PhD with Plan International, ‘Capturing forgotten voices: adolescents’ experiences of displacement and humanitarian action’.

Starting September 2024: Míriam Vercher, AHRC-funded PhD, ‘From hero to traumatized victim? Spanish refugee children and debates about refugee mental health in the mid-20th century’.

Expertise related to UN Sustainable Development Goals

In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person’s work contributes towards the following SDG(s):

  • SDG 2 - Zero Hunger
  • SDG 10 - Reduced Inequalities

Research Beacons, Institutes and Platforms

  • Global inequalities
  • Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute

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Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years

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