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R.M. (Rachel) Johnston-White, PhD

Assistant Professor of Contemporary History
Profile picture of R.M. (Rachel) Johnston-White, PhD
E-mail:
r.m.johnston-white rug.nl

Rachel Johnston-White is an Assistant Professor at the University of Groningen. She holds a PhD in History from Yale University (2017), an MPhil in Modern European History from the University of Cambridge (2011), and a BA in History & French Studies with High Honors from Emory University (2010). Prior to coming to Groningen, she held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Vienna School of International Studies from 2017 to 2019. She has been a fellow at the IWM (Institute for Human Sciences) in Vienna, as well as a Visiting Researcher at Sciences Po, Paris; the University of Glasgow; and Aberystwyth University. 

She is currently completing the manuscript for her book project, "Christianity in Conflict: Resistance and Human Rights in France." The project explores how left-wing or dissident Christians in 20th-century France understood their relationship to the state and their obligation of obedience as citizens. It argues that the politicization of conscience offered a challenge to the postwar European human rights consensus, in which state sovereignty remained relatively unchecked, especially in the colonial sphere. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Contemporary History, H-Diplo, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, and further pieces are forthcoming in Past & Present, Contemporary European History, and in a new volume on the history of social justice.

She is also at work on a second book project, which looks at how anti-colonialism and Christian “Third-Worldism” shaped relations between Christians and Jews within and beyond France. 

Last modified:25 June 2022 11.34 a.m.