About

Dr Emmanuel Comte is a historian of contemporary Europe and international relations, with a focus on international migration.

He is the author of The History of the European Migration Regime (Routledge, 2018), a work that has transformed the understanding of how European countries developed a regime of relative freedom of movement within the continent. He has also edited Discussing Pax Germanica: The Rise and Limits of German Hegemony in European Integration (Routledge, 2025) and published numerous scholarly contributions in English, French, German, and Spanish in leading journals, including The International Spectator, Afers internacionals, Cold War History, Labor History, Le Mouvement social, Relations internationales, and the Journal of European Integration History. These articles have contributed to ongoing debates across a range of disciplines, including the beginnings of the Cold War and European integration, the external relations of the European Union, labour conflicts involving immigrants and native workers, differentiated integration in the European Union, and migration policies in the recent pandemic.

An alumnus of the École normale supérieure in Paris, where he earned the French agrégation in History in 2007 and a graduate degree in History and International Relations in 2009, Dr Comte received a European PhD summa cum laude in the History of Europe and International Relations from Sorbonne University in 2014. His prize-winning dissertation was titled ‘The Formation of the European Migration Regime, 1947–1992.’

Dr Comte has held positions at leading academic and research institutions, including the European University Institute in Florence, the University of California, Berkeley, the Vienna School of International Studies, the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB), the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy in Athens (ELIAMEP), and the University of Cyprus. His research has been supported by private and public donors from various countries, including the French National Research Agency and the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (ELIDEK). His research has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sktodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No 101034403.

Dr Comte is currently a Marie Skłodowska-Curie–ONISILOS fellow at the University of Cyprus. He teaches as a professorial lecturer at the Vienna School of International Studies (Diplomatische Akademie Wien) and is also affiliated as a senior research fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy in Athens (ELIAMEP).

Proficient in five major European languages – English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish – Dr Comte also has some competence in Dutch and Greek.

‘The French historian, who has taught and worked since his doctorate at Berkeley, the EUI in Florence and … the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna, … [has produced a] ground-breaking [book] in a very relevant field of European integration’. – Prof. Philipp Ther, University of Vienna.

‘Comte is an accomplished research historian with unusual gifts for comparative history; students at UC Berkeley also praised him as a concerned, enlightened, and effective teacher.’ – Prof. John Connelly, University of California, Berkeley.