Margot Desplanches, M.A.
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About
Margot Desplanches studied History at Université Grenoble Alpes and Political Science and Comparative Government at Sciences Po Grenoble from 2014 to 2020. During this time, she completed study stays at the University of Potsdam in 2016/2017 and 2017/2018 within the Erasmus+ programme. From 2019 to 2022, she pursued a Master’s degree in History at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, where she wrote her thesis on the demolition of St James’ Church in Dessau in the GDR in 1977. From July 2023 to July 2025, she worked as a cultural mediator at the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin, where she developed and conducted multilingual guided tours in German, French and English and contributed to exhibitions on German and European history.
Since November 2025, she has been a doctoral candidate in a binational cotutelle PhD programme in German Studies and History at Université Bordeaux Montaigne and Leipzig University under the supervision of Hélène Camarade and Maren Röger. Her dissertation project examines domestic violence and the emergence of women’s shelters (Frauenhäuser) in the GDR and the eastern German federal states between 1979 and 1997. She is an associated doctoral researcher at the Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin within the research area »Dynamics of Inequalities«.
Margot Desplanches has been an associated researcher and a doctoral candidate at the GWZO in the department »Entanglements and Globalisation« since April 2026.
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Work focus
- History of the GDR and the post-socialist transformation period
- Gender history
- History of violence against women, women’s shelters, women’s movements and feminism
- History of feminist transfers between the GDR and East Central and Eastern Europe
- Oral history
- Memory culture and politics of history
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Functions and Memberships
- Member of the Association of German Studies in Higher Education (AGES) since 2025
- Member of GIRAF-IFFD (Interdisciplinary Research Group Germany–France / Groupe interdisciplinaire de recherche Allemagne–France) since 2025
- Member of Genre en Germ’ since 2026, French Association of German Studies scholars working on gender
- Member of the association »Choisir« since 2024.
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Awards
- 2026 Geneviève Bianquis Mobility Award from the Association of German Studies in Higher Education (AGES)
Current Research Topic
Domestic Violence and Women’s Shelters in East Germany (1979–1997)
The project examines the emergence of autonomous women’s shelters in the GDR and in the new federal states between 1979 and 1997. It focuses on the question of how feminist initiatives succeeded in making violence against women visible and in shaping the development of lasting support structures after 1990.
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