I’m Stephanie, a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge and currently a visiting fellow at the IHP at the Graduate Institute. I’m very grateful to be here at the Graduate Institute, it is a joy being surrounded by so many excellent scholars working on international organisations and transnational histories. Before starting my PhD, I did my BA and MA in History at Leiden University and had a great semester at SOAS in London. During that time, I focused mostly on the social networks of British colonial officials in the twentieth century and their careers within the British Empire and the ILO.

What is your research focused on?

My current research asks how disabled workers and their kin shaped the implementation of international policies on injury compensation in the British Empire during the interbellum. It specifically considers different forms of protest, from petitions to strikes, to illuminate how workers managed to push for legislative changes vis-a-vis the treatment of disabled workers in colonized countries. At a more general level, I’m interested in conceptions of disability in the workplace and relationships between networks of care and networks of protest.

Since starting the PhD my research has shifted towards trying to understand how disabled workers and their kin influenced the implementation of international conventions on injury compensation in the British Empire during the interbellum. It is not always an easy topic as it is painful to notice long-term continuities in terms of ableist work practices and the difficulties of juggling unpaid care labour with poorly renumerated labour. At the same time, it gives me some hope to see that forms of protest such as petitions managed to at least partly change how disabled people were treated.

What brought you to the Department of International History and Politics at the Institute?

The Department is very close to the International Labour Organisation in two ways; the archives are within walking distance of the institute and many of the scholars at the IHP have worked or are working on histories of the ILO or IO’s more generally. Moreover, my supervisor in Geneva, dr. Nicole Bourbonnais, has done incredible work on the intersections of colonial, international, and gender history and I am very grateful that I can benefit from her knowledge at this stage in my PhD. Overall, I am learning tons on transnational histories of policy-making and IO’s and grounding my PhD in that scholarship with the support of everyone here has been tremendously helpful.

What brought you to the Department of International History and Politics at the Institute?

The Department is very close to the International Labour Organisation in two ways; the archives are within walking distance of the institute and many of the scholars at the IHP have worked or are working on histories of the ILO or IO’s more generally. Moreover, my supervisor in Geneva, dr. Nicole Bourbonnais, has done incredible work on the intersections of colonial, international, and gender history and I am very grateful that I can benefit from her knowledge at this stage in my PhD. Overall, I am learning tons on transnational histories of policy-making and IO’s and grounding my PhD in that scholarship with the support of everyone here has been tremendously helpful.

What are your plans after this Visiting Fellowship?

That is a difficult question as what I would like to do and what I can do are not always automatically in sync in academic environments. Very practically speaking, I’m in my third year now and want to finish the PhD before my funding runs out. Longer-term, if I would have the possibility, I would like to do more comparative work and trace the legislative legacies of the themes that I set out in my PhD. If I could do that at the Graduate Institute that would be perfect because I feel at home here and the ILO archive is very close by. Anyone who knows me a bit also knows I never shut up about mountains, so you can imagine I am very happy here in Switzerland and would be grateful if I could stay.