dr. sophie roberts

Professional Background

Sophie Roberts received her PhD in History and Jewish Studies from the University of Toronto, Canada, where she researched French colonial and Jewish history. Since 2011, she is the Zantker Assistant Professor of Jewish History and Jewish Studies at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, where she also serves as the Hillel Faculty Advisor. Prior to this appointment she served as a visiting assistant professor at Stanford University in California, where she created four new Jewish history and Modern European history courses. In addition, she has lectured at a variety of conferences. She is proficient in French and Hebrew.

Her publications include The Limits of Citizenship: Jews, Citizenship, and Antisemitism in French Colonial Algeria, a book manuscript in preparation for a university press; “The Role of Antisemitic Municipal Governments in Interwar French Colonial Algeria,” forthcoming in The Journal of North African Studies on New Approaches to Algerian Jewish Studies; “Les ‘résistants aux étoiles’,” in Les Chemins de la Mémoires, Ministère de la Défense et des Anciens Combattants, No. 213, March 2011, pp. 2-4; and “The Zazous, Youth Rebellion, and the Yellow Star Campaign in Occupied Paris, 1942,” in French History, Vol. 24. No. 1, 2010, pp. 82-103, which will be incorporated into an exhibit at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2013.

Dr. Roberts has received several awards and scholarships, including the Posen Fellowship, Vidal Sassoon International Centre for the Study of Antisemitism, University of Jerusalem, and the Connaught Scholarship from the University of Toronto, awarded to 25 graduate students throughout the university.

Fellowship Research

For her Sosland Foundation Fellowship, Dr. Roberts researched “Vichy in North Africa: The Experience of Jews in French North Africa in World War II.”

Dr. Roberts was in residence at the Center from September 1, 2012 to May 31, 2013.