Clélia Lacam

Clélia Lacam is a second-year Ph.D. candidate in African History at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University. Her research, under the supervision of Anne Hugon, focuses on women and missions in colonial Gabon (1842-1961), through a connected study of Catholic nuns, Protestant missionary women and converted African women. By considering religious archives, “propaganda” literature and iconographic collections, she examines how the missionary experience reshaped gender relations and paved the way to a new female agency.

Clélia Lacam received her M.Phil. in African History from the same university, and she was awarded the 2021 Mnémosyne Prize for the best French masters dissertation on women’s and gender history. Thanks to this prize, she published her first book in 2023 (Le Bleu et le Noir. Jeux de pouvoirs dans une mission catholique féminine, Gabon, 1911-1955). In addition to her research, she teaches Modern European History at Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne University. She plans to visit Columbia University to conduct documentary research in Protestant missionary archives in New York City and Philadelphia.