Etienne Gontard joins SHOC as a PhD student on the FORAGENCY project, supervised by Benoît Henriet. Etienne obtained a Bachelor and Master degrees in cultural administration at Sciences Po Paris and a Master degree in environmental studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS).
His master’s thesis described ivory extraction on the African continent, as well as its main importation, transformation and consumption national contexts, from 1860 to 1918. It aimed to show how precolonial and colonial trade were enmeshed, how the material conditions of ivory and its extraction influenced forms of exploitation of wildlife, how ivory has been locally a factor of imperialist projection and how discourses on ivory as a resource were conditioned by its accessibility for the industrialized metropolises.
His current PhD research focuses on hunted, fished and foraged foodstuffs in Colonial Central Africa as ways for local communities to avoid wage labor, cultural suppression and economic dependency. His main interests are environmental and colonial history.