Nicolas Blumenthal

Guest Scholar

German Historical Institute Washington
1607 New Hampshire Ave NW | Washington DC 20009
Phone

nicolas.blumenthal@unifr.ch

Biographical Summary

Nicolas Blumenthal is a historian with a focus on Swiss and European contemporary history. His research interests include deportation, migration and mobility, as well as questions of citizenship and social exclusion and inclusion. Nicolas obtained his MA in history from the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) in 2020, with a thesis on the history of denazification and the expulsion of Nazis in the Canton of Zurich in Switzerland after the Second World War. As co-editor of the forthcoming special issue of the journal Itinera – Beiheft zur SZG entitled "Geschichte(n) der Deportation. Diskurse, Praktiken und Infrastruktur im 20. und 21. Jahrhundert in der Schweiz,"Nicolas and other historians and sociologists present new research on the history of deportations from Switzerland. Since 2020, he has been working as a graduate assistant and doctoral student in the Department of Contemporary History at the University of Fribourg. He received a doc.mobility fellowship from the University of Fribourg in 2024 and is currently a guest scholar at the GHI Washington.

During his stay in Washington, he will work on his dissertation project. His research explores various aspects of Switzerland’s deportation history in the period 1945-1980, including the legitimations, logics and mechanisms of removal, deportation infrastructures and logistics, the transnational negotiation of deportations through readmission agreements, and the everyday practices of street-level bureaucrats. He also focuses on the agency of deportees and their solidary groups and the manifold ways in which they contested deportations.

Main Areas of Interest

  • Deportation Studies and History
  • History of Migrant Detention
  • History of Migration and Mobility
  • Citizenship, Practices of Exclusion and Inclusion
  • Migrant Knowledge and Agency
  • Anti-Deportation and Solidarity Movements
  • History of Denazification