Dr Emmanuel Comte is a French-Swiss historian of contemporary Europe and international relations, with a focus on international migration. A graduate 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, he 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), and the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy in Athens (ELIAMEP). His research has been supported by the French National Research Agency, the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme, and the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (ELIDEK).
Dr Comte 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 published numerous scholarly articles in English, French, 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.
Proficient in five major European languages – English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish – Dr Comte has also some competence in Dutch and Greek.
