Paris, 21/02/2018

Letter in Support of Dr Eve Gianoncelli

Dear Colleagues

I am writing to recommend in the highest terms Dr Eve Gianoncelli who wishes to get support from the
Department of Politics and International Studies in order to apply for a two years Newton fellowship. Ms
Gianoncelli has successfully defended her doctoral thesis in Political Science and Gender Studies (The
conquest of thought. For a transnational intellectual history of women and gender), at the University of
Paris 8/Vincennes à Saint Denis, on December 2016. She has received the "unanimous congratulations of
the jury" - a distinction awarded only to those candidates who are considered to belong to the top 5% of
the candidates in each discipline.

I first met Eve Gianoncelli in 2007, when she was preparing her Master thesis on the itineraries of femi-
nist intellectuals and contacted me for an interview. A year later (2008-2009) she started her PhD thesis,
under my supervision, at the University Paris 8-Vincennes à Saint-Denis. From this time on, I have been
following the intellectual and academic itinerary of this gifted young scholar.

As advisor of her PhD thesis, but also as a colleague, when she started teaching at Paris 8, finally, in my
quality of director, then, senior member of the Centre des Etudes Sociologiques et Politiques de Paris
(CRESPPA/CNRS) of which she is still a member, I have largely had the opportunity to appreciate the
intellectual vivaciousness of this gifted young scholar, the uncommon blend of a solid attachment to po-
litical theory, gender studies and intellectual history, with an imaginative ability to open up research to
new, unexpected directions of inquiry – literature, art history, iconography, postcolonial and transnational
studies, critical race theory, - and her pedagogic qualities in teaching and supervising the work of her
students. Eve Gianoncelli has been teaching as research assistant (ATER), in departments of Political Sci-
ence and Gender Studies (Universities Paris 1, Paris 4 Sorbonne, Lille 3, Paris 8, Université Paris-
Dauphine). She has taught Political sociology courses in English (in Paris 8 and Paris I), from first-year
juniors to MA students.

Eve Gianoncelli has published several papers and presented research papers in national and international
conferences. She was awarded a Lurcy-Fulbright Fellowship and has been visiting fellow during her two
years stay at Columbia University. Her dissertation, one of the first important contributions to a
transnational intellectual history of women and gender in France, has been based on original archival
material found in France, the island of Jersey, the USA, and Britain and attests to the great quality and
thoroughness of her work, her capacity to con- duct a multidisciplinary approach, the subtlety of her
 qualitative analysis acknowledged by the members of the jury of her thesis. Her exploration to the making
of three female intellectuals confronted to some of the great issues at stake of last century - colonialism,
antisemitism, racism - also related to those three in- tellectuals’ otherness" masterfully demonstrated the
ways in which becoming an intellectual and becom- ing a subject is part of the same process. Her thesis is
one of the few major contributions to the study of Paulette Nardal, the Martinican forerunner of
Negritude; the first substantial contribution in France to the study of Viola Klein, the Czech Jewish exile
in London, disciple of Mannheim and pioneer of the sociol- ogy of women and sociology of knowledge
(whose work has been the subject of a special issue of Cahiers du Genre coordinated by Gianoncelli and
myself); and a thorough and perceptive analysis of the art and politics of the surrealist artist and anti-Nazi
activist Claude Cahun.

The present project of Eve Gianoncelli aims at broadening the scope of this work inquiring into the ways
in which intellectual trends and ideas are circulating, received, and reshaped or resisted – a process in
which new political ideologies emerge, develop and travel today, in a period where what was thought as
an exorcised past is coming back to haunt contemporary European societies. The study of “new”
conservative intellectuals that she proposes to accomplish in comparative and transnational perspective
between the United Kingdom and France seems to me of a great topicality and interest. Attention J’ai
enlevé ce dernier paragraphe parce que ça sonne un truc un peu naïf et …pro domo qu.ils n’aiment
pas et qui n’est pas très sérieux

I am certain that the privileged intellectual atmosphere and cosmopolitan scientific life in the department
of Politics and International Studies at Cambridge, that a Newton Fellowship would allow her to be part
of would be an enriching environment for developing this ambitious and highly topical project in that it
could provide Ms Gianoncelli with a rich collaborative milieu and highly formative experience that will
enable her to accomplish her research. Thanks to her talent in creatively crossing cultural, theoretical and
disciplinary boundaries, to her social openness and human qualities, she can be an interesting and innova-
tive researcher and a welcome member of any scientific community. For all these reasons, I warmly rec-
ommend her for the Newton fellowship and remain at your disposition for any further information.

Eleni Varikas. Emerita Professor in Political Theory and Gender Studies

Department of Political Science.
University Paris 8. Vincennes Saint-Denis.
Centre de Recherches Sociologiques et Politiques de Paris
Centre National de Recherche Scientifique CNRS UMR 7217
tel. +33 615 10 48 50 evarikas@yahoo.fr
 CRESPPA UMR CNRS 7217
59-61 rue Pouchet – 75849 Paris Cedex 17
Tél. : 01 40 25 10 60 – Fax : 01 40 25 12 03
Email : gtm@gtm.cnrs.fr