Sophie Baby

A graduate of the École Normale Supérieure (ENS Ulm), holder of the agrégation in history, a former member of the Casa de Velázquez (Madrid) and an honorary member of the Institut Universitaire de France, Sophie Baby was a researcher at the University of Burgundy Europe before joining Sciences Po as a professor in 2026. Her research focuses on the transnational issues raised by mass violence and the memory of such events in our contemporary societies, particularly in the Euro-American sphere of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Having previously researched the role of violence during Spain’s transition to democracy (Le mythe de la transition pacifique (FR) [The Myth of the Peaceful Transition], 2012, translated into Spanish by Akal in 2018), she has now adopted a comparative and transnational perspective (co-edited, Violencia y transiciones políticas a finales del siglo XX. Europa del Sur-América latina (ES) [Violence and Political Transitions at the End of the 20th Century. Southern Europe–Latin America], 2009). Her research focuses on the globalisation of memory regimes at the end of the 20th century, the international circulation of post-conflict reconciliation mechanisms and so-called ‘transitional’ justice since the 1970s, and the political and social uses of the traces of past violence.

In this context, she co-edited an enhanced e-book (Condamner le passé ? Mémoires des passés autoritaires en Europe et en Amérique latine (FR) [Condemning the past? Memories of authoritarian regimes in Europe and Latin America], 2019, available to download free of charge online) and a special issue of Global Society on Euro-American transnational networks (“Justice, Memory and Transnational Networks. European and South American Entanglements”, 2019), as part of a Franco-British programme (Labex Les passés dans le présent / AHRC Care for the Future). Having led a project on the exhumation of contemporary mass graves (as co-editor of the special issue “Material Traces of Mass Death: The Exhumed Object”, Les Cahiers SIRICE, 2017), she co-directed a research programme at the Casa de Velázquez, REGIMEM, on regimes of memory in Spain, which examined the dynamics of competing memories of Francoism and terrorism since the 1970s.

Dans son dernier livre, Juger Franco ? Impunité, réconciliation, mémoire (La Découverte, 2024, traduit en espagnols chez Akal, 2025), elle explore les impulsions et les obstacles à l’insertion de l’Espagne dans l’âge global de la mémoire, par l’analyse des réseaux et des transferts transnationaux à l’œuvre dans la longue fabrique d’un après-guerre et d’un après-franquisme pensés à une échelle euro-américaine. Tour à tour mauvaise conscience du monde libre, modèle de réconciliation démocratique, championne de la justice universelle ou modèle d’impunité, l’Espagne prend place dans une histoire globale des sorties de guerre et des réparations internationales, des droits de l’homme et de la justice transitionnelle, du devoir de mémoire et de la lutte contre l’impunité. 

In her latest book, Juger Franco ? Impunité, réconciliation, mémoire (FR) [Putting Franco on trial? Impunity, reconciliation, memory] (La Découverte, 2024, translated into Spanish by Akal, 2025), she explores the driving forces and obstacles to Spain’s integration into the global age of memory, through an analysis of the transnational networks and exchanges at work in the long process of shaping a post-war and post-Franco era conceived on a Euro-American scale. By turns the free world’s guilty conscience, a model of democratic reconciliation, a champion of universal justice or a model of impunity, Spain occupies a place in a global history of post-war recovery and international reparations, human rights and transitional justice, the duty to remember and the fight against impunity.

She was recently appointed by the Spanish government to serve on the Technical Commission set up to investigate human rights violations suffered by individuals in their struggle to consolidate democracy, fundamental rights and democratic values between 1978 and 1983. She has also recently edited a special issue of the Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine (RHMC) devoted to ‘Academic freedom under threat’ and regularly contributes to the media (press, radio, television).

Sophie Baby is currently working on a transnational history of post-conflict reparations in the 20th and 21st centuries.

• Étienne Kogan, Devenir milicien et bourreau. Les « Lions de Rota » dans la guerre d’Espagne (années 1930- années 1950), in co-supervision with David Alegre Lorenz, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
• David Aller Soriano, Terrorisme et démocratie : la violence au cœur du processus d’européanisation de l’Espagne (1978-2002) 

M2 Research Seminar, Master’s in History: “La mémoire, un objet d’histoire ?” (in French).

Junior member of the Institut universitaire de France (IUF) (2017–2022).

Member of the editorial board of the Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine (RHMC).

Member of the editorial boards of the Spanish journals Historia Contemporánea (University of the Basque Country) and Studia Historica. Historia Contemporánea (University of Salamanca).