Dr. Claire Zalc

Professional Background

Claire Zalc is Research Director at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS, France) and a professor at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS, France). She received her PhD in history from Nanterre University, won the CNRS Medal Bronze, and completed her “Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches” on denaturalization under the Vichy regime in France. Her research focuses on the relationship between the history of migration and the Holocaust. She has written on topics such as business and entrepreneurship, immigration in France, and the history of persecution during the Vichy regime. 

Dr. Zalc is the author of numerous publications, including Melting Shops. Une histoire des commerçants étrangers en France (Perrin, 2010), 991 Juifs face à la guerre (2010) co-written with Nicolas Mariot, Microhistories of the Holocaust, (co-edited with Tal Bruttmann, Berghahn, 2016), Denaturalized: How Thousands Lost Their Citizenship and Lives in Vichy France, (Belknap Press, 2016, 2020), for which she was awarded the 2016 Malesherbes History of Justice Book Prize and honorable mention for the 2022 Eugen Weber Book Prize. Dr. Zalc is currently a member of the editorial boards for French Politics, Culture and Society, 20&21. Revue d’histoire, Le Mouvement social, and Revue d’histoire française de la Shoah. She is the principal investigator of the ERC Consolidator LUBARTWORLD project. 

Fellowship Research

As the 2024-2025 Ina Levine Invitational Scholar-in-Residence, Claire Zalc will work on her project, "Migration and Holocaust: Transnational Trajectories of Lubartów Jews throughout the World.” The project presents a collective biography of the Jewish inhabitants of the Polish town of Lubartów from the early 1920s through the 1950s, whether they emigrated or stayed behind and whether they were murdered or survived the Holocaust. It combines a transnational historical perspective with a microhistorical methodology. 

The project examines the dynamics of a social structure undergoing major disruption by studying social conditions and the consequences of a group’s destruction. Who fled? When and where? With whom? Who survived, and who did not? This also broaches the question of “who knew what” among the victims by studying how information circulated among them. Her project will enable the comparison of the trajectories of all members of one group and reflect on interpersonal links and their effects on victims’ behavior. The collective scope helps to interpret the post-Holocaust dislocation of social bonds and networks, as well as their potential for individual and communal reconstruction for survivors.

Residency Period: October 1, 2024–June 30, 2025