Meryl Lavenant

Meryl Lavenant is a PhD candidate at the History department in Paris I – Panthéon Sorbonne University in France. She is an alumnus of the École Normale Supérieure, and studied Russian language at Inalco (Paris). She is passionate with foreign languages and masters French, English, Italian, Spanish and Russian.

Her research deals with the Russian southern expansion and the maritime aspects of the imperial project developed in the Black Sea region from 1774 to the late nineteenth century. Meryl proposes a work at the crossroads of imperial and maritime History, paying special attention to the importance of space in imperial dynamics and representations. She is particularly interested in reflecting on methodological challenges, in a context of difficult access to archives in Ukraine and Russia.

Apart from her research activity, Meryl teaches in the Sorbonne and would like to explore the various and innovative ways in which historical research can be publicized.