Robin, Marie

Marie Robin is a doctoral candidate in the history department, focusing on the 20^th-century French Empire, with an emphasis on North Africa and Southeast Asia. Her dissertation examines the French military’s management and oversight of soldiers’ sexuality during the decolonization wars in Vietnam (1946-54) and Algeria (1954-62), uncovering the political stakes and the broader legal, gendered, and racial implications of its practice. Using an assemblage of French, Arabic, and Vietnamese archival, visual, literary and oral sources, Robin’s research reveals how French regulation of troops’ sexuality and behaviors, including rape, was carried out through the institutionalization of Bordels Militaires de Campagne (BMC) —the ubiquitous state-sanctioned military brothels enterprise sustained by the transcolonial sexual labor and trafficking of Asian and North African women and girls.

Alongside a ground-level exploration of the BMC institution, her project also seeks to explain how the political and social dynamics of decolonization reconfigured the framework of sexual violence, particularly as rape became a focal point in anti-colonial nationalist rhetoric, and how women navigated and resisted the system that both defined and perpetuated their victimization.

Experience

Marie’s research has been supported by the American Historical Association, the Journal of Women’s History, the Society for French Historical Studies, the Alliance Doctoral Mobility Grant, the Association for Documentary Editing and various grants from Columbia university.

Before coming to Columbia, Marie earned her BA in History and Middle-Eastern Studies, graduating summa cum laude from the American University of Paris (2017) and her MA in History from Durham University (2018). She recently published “‘A Constant Influx of Men, Day and Night’: Sex Trafficking and French Military Prostitution during the First Vietnam War (1946-54)” in Histories of Sex Work Around the World (London: Routledge, 2024). She has also translated chapters of the book series Cambridge History of the Vietnam War, vol. 1 & 3.