Rachel Pougnet

Dr Rachel Pougnet is a Postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law, Freiburg im Brisgau. Her main teaching and research interests are in the fields of citizenship studies, comparative constitutional law, public law, socio-legal studies, national security, empire and decolonisation, and human rights.

Rachel is currently writing her first monograph, Citizenship deprivation and the Constitutional state: the politics of (un) belonging, to be published by Cambridge University Press. Based on her PhD thesis and further postdoctoral research, the book examines the return of citizenship deprivation in France and the UK and seeks explanations for similarities as well as differences between these states’ practices. The book positions citizenship deprivation within a broader historical perspective and traces some of the processes of exclusions embedded within the French/British citizenship regimes. It also considers the impact of more local and contingent factors on these states’ practices, such as their constitutional (supra) structures and imperial legacies. While in Oxford, Rachel will be working on several chapters of this book.

Rachel completed her PhD at the University of Bristol in 2020 and holds a Master in International Law from the Sorbonne University (2013-2015). She held teaching and research positions at the Universities of Bristol and Manchester. As an academic, she has been working closely with civil society organisationsand international research partners.