Micheline Lessard, PhD

Affiliation: University of Ottawa

Micheline Lessard obtained her PhD in History in 1995 from Cornell University. Her area of specialization is Southeast Asia, and her specific area of research is Vietnam during the French colonial period (1862-1954). Micheline is currently the Assistant Professor of History at the University of Ottawa in Canada. She has written articles on the role of Vietnamese women in politics, broadening the scope of the “political” to examine the ways in which women contributed to defining and achieving national independence. She has written articles and chapters pertaining to student activism and the education of women in colonial Vietnam. Between 2006 and 2015, Micheline conducted research on the trafficking of women and children from Vietnam to China. This study culminated in the publication of an article and a book published by Routledge. She is currently writing a manuscript on the migration of workers in French Indochina, a phenomenon that also examines the trafficking and the illicit recruitment of Vietnamese workers. Her next project will be on French Sinophobia between the 1880’s and the late 1920’s in colonial Vietnam. Micheline is also working on the creation of a database of Vietnamese migrant workers, an element of the research done for the current manuscript.

Research Interests:

• History of women in colonial Vietnam

• History of Vietnamese women’s role in national construction

• History human trafficking

• History of human trafficking in colonial Vietnam

• History of Catholic missionary actions against human trafficking in China and Vietnam

• History of migrations in Southeast Asia

• History of Vietnamese labour migrations

• History of labour recruitment

• History of the criminalization of workers in colonial Vietnam

• Systemic factors that result in human trafficking:

  • Gender

  • Poverty

  • Race

  • Class

  • Political and economic chaos