Christophe Gillain

I am a Postdoctoral Research Assistant working on the project Communicating the Law in Europe, 1500-1750 (ERC-Selected, UKRI Frontier Research Grant, 2024-2028). 

I was awarded my PhD in 2023 from the University of Cambridge for a thesis entitled 'Cardinal de Retz, French Noble Exile, and Political Mobility in Seventeenth-Century Europe’. My research examined how rebellious elites organised transnational networks of resistance to the French crown and its ministers, playing a central role in shaping the absolutist state. 

Before beginning my doctoral studies, I completed an MA thesis at the University of Auckland on violence and affection in seventeenth-century French memoirs. 

My research focuses on the political culture of early modern France and Europe more broadly. I am particularly interested in forms of communication and mobility, and what they can tell us about how political authority and state power developed in this period. 

I have co-edited a forthcoming Special Issue of the journal Renaissance Studies, 'Innovation and Exile in the Early Modern World', with Dr Annalisa Nicholson at King's College London. I am currently working on my first monograph, tentatively entitled Transnational Rebellion in Bourbon France: Exile, Mobility, and the Making of the Absolutist State, 1630-1661. 

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Cambridge. Thesis Title: 'Cardinal de Retz, French Noble Exile, and Political Mobility in Seventeenth-Century Europe'. Award Date: 20 October 2023