My research concerns the history of human-animal relationships and of wildlife control and protection policies from the early 19th century onward. I conducted a PhD on the history of European zoological gardens at both the Free University of Brussels and the University of Lyon. The material and ideational networks woven throughout the history of zoos led me to develop my current research on the history of international, (post)colonial wildlife conservation policies in Central Africa, carried out through a socio-environmental history of the management of elephants in both Congo and Uganda.
From 2015 to 2017, I was a Wiener-Anspach postdoctoral fellow at the African Studies Centre at the University of Oxford. I continued my research as a postdoctoral assistant at Ghent University (2017-2019), then as a research fellow of both the Research Foundation-Flanders (FWO) at Ghent University and the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS) at the Free University of Brussels. Since 2020, I have been a permanent research fellow at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), affiliated with the LARHRA (UMR 5190). I am also a visiting professor at Ghent University and an associate member of the Centre de Recherches Historiques (UMR 8558).
Publications: https://cnrs.academia.edu/ViolettePouillard
