I wish to direct my research at the Centre Marc Bloch towards a socio-environmental history of the Soviet southern belt in the 20th century, by continuing my current research project: “De la vigne à la lavande, histoire d'une ancienne colonie allemande de Moldavie soviétique“ (”From vines to lavender, history of a former German colony in Soviet Moldavia“), and by conducting the exploratory phase of a future collective project: ‘Voisins à l'ombre du génocide des Arméniens: construire le territoire de l'Arménie soviétique, une histoire des réseaux et infrastructures au Caucase du Sud’ (”Neighbors in the shadow of the Armenian genocide: building the territory of Soviet Armenia, a history of networks and infrastructures in the South Caucasus").

What both projects have in common is an interest in the construction and operation of networked infrastructures, changes in living organisms and landscapes (both rural and industrial), and forms of extractivism in the Soviet context. In both Moldavia and Armenia, they combine a micro-historical approach to territorialized communities with their inclusion in much larger inter-regional and inter-state spaces. They aim to reconstruct the socio-cultural history of working communities seen as crucibles in contexts of strong inter-ethnic tensions and contested borderlands. Covering the entire Soviet XXth century, this history of the concrete implementation of technological innovation intersects with a social history of the political violence specific to the Soviet regime, including deportations and forced labor, which are still little studied in these regions, while unfolding and emphasizing the post-Stalinist decades and the pivotal era of Perestroika.