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About Me

Rachel McElroy White is an Assistant Professor at the University of Groningen. She holds a PhD in History from Yale University (2017), an MPhil in Modern European History from the University of Cambridge (2011), and a BA in History & French Studies with High Honors from Emory University (2010). Prior to coming to Groningen, she held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Vienna School of International Studies from 2017 to 2019. She has been a fellow at the IWM (Institute for Human Sciences) in Vienna, as well as a Visiting Researcher at Sciences Po, Paris; the University of Glasgow; and Aberystwyth University.

She is currently completing the manuscript for her book project, “Christianity in Conflict: Resistance and Human Rights in France.” The project explores how left-wing or dissident Christians in 20th-century France understood their relationship to the state and their obligation of obedience as citizens. It argues that the politicization of conscience offered a challenge to the postwar European human rights consensus, in which state sovereignty remained relatively unchecked, especially in the colonial sphere. Her work has appeared in Past & Present, Journal of Contemporary History, H-Diplo, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Contemporary European History, and the volume Social Justice in Twentieth-Century Europe, edited by Martin Conway and Camilo Erlichman (Cambridge University Press, 2024).

She is also at work on a new NWO-funded project, “Photographing torture: Cultures of violence and soldiers as witnesses during the Algerian War.” During the Algerian War (1954-1962), torture was an institutionalized weapon of war and the subject of drafted soldiers’ personal photography. To date, studies that address such photographs have focused on their original usage as evidence of war crimes. Yet we must consider these photographs as non-neutral sources that reflect both military cultures of violence and soldier-photographers’ personal views, aims, and social-cultural milieus. As photography gains contemporary importance as “verifiable” proof of war crimes, it is vital to investigate how the intentions of soldier-photographers as participants in, or opponents of, violence shape the content and potential uses of war atrocity photographs.

Recent Publications

Peer-reviewed publications (published / in press, in reverse chronological order)

Rachel McElroy White, ed., Antiliberal Internationalism in the Twentieth Century: Beyond Left and Right (Abingdon: Routledge Studies in Fascism and the Far Right, in press). 381pp. (with Matthijs Lok, Robin de Bruin, Marjet Brolsma, and Stefan Couperus)

Rachel McElroy White, “Introduction: Antiliberal internationalism in the twentieth century” in Antiliberal Internationalism in the Twentieth Century: Beyond Left and Right (Abingdon: Routledge Studies in Fascism and the Far Right, in press), pp. 1-22. (with Matthijs Lok, Robin de Bruin, Marjet Brolsma, and Stefan Couperus)

Rachel M. Johnston-White, “Catholic Conceptions of Social Justice from 1890 to Pope Francis” in Martin Conway and Camilo Erlichman, eds., Social Justice in Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2024), pp. 53-77.

 

Rachel M. Johnston-White, “The Christian Anti-Torture Movement and the Politics of Conscience in France,” Past & Present 257:1 (November 2022), 318-342.

Rachel M. Johnston-White, “A moral language for our time? Human rights and Christianity in historical perspective,” Contemporary European History 31:1 (2022), 155-166.

Rachel M. Johnston-White, “A New Primacy of Conscience? Conscientious Objection, French Catholicism and the State during the Algerian War,” Journal of Contemporary History 1:54 (2019), 112-138.

Book Manuscript

Rachel McElroy White, Christianity in Conflict: Resistance and Human Rights in France from Vichy to De Gaulle (under consideration with Cambridge University Press)

Book Reviews / Op-Ed

 

Rachel M. Johnston-White, “Review of Wolfram Kaiser and Piotr H. Kosicki, editors, Political Exile in the Global Twentieth Century: Catholic Christian Democrats in Europe and the Americas,” The Catholic Historical Review 109: 3 (2023), pp. 618-19.

Rachel Johnston-White, “Review of Robert Dumont, La Condamnation des prêtres-ouvriers (1953-1954). Étude de cas à travers les documents. Postface by Denis Pelletier. Paris: Karthala, 2019,” H-France Review 22:56 (April 2022), pp. 1-7.

Rachel Johnston-White and Joseph Peterson, “French Secularism, Reinvented,” The Los Angeles Review of Books, 11 Feb 2021. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/french-secularism-reinvented

Rachel Johnston-White, “H-Diplo Roundtable XXI-38: Review of Piotr H. Kosicki, Catholics on the Barricades: Poland, France, and “Revolution,” 1891-1956 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), H-Diplo (27 April 2020), pp. 8-12.

Publications in preparation

Rachel McElroy White, “A reformist mirage? The Service des Centres Sociaux (1955-62) and the Algeria that never was” in Ariella Aïsha Azoulay and Adel Ben Bella, eds., Expressions Maghrébines, Special issue: “Algérie: Chemins non empruntés, chemins ouverts, et (re)transcriptions photographiques” 25:2 (forthcoming November 2025).

Rachel McElroy White, “The Christian democratic Mouvement Républicain Populaire and Catholic politics in France after the Second World War” in Rosario Forlenza and Udo Zolleis, eds., The Routledge Handbook on Christian Democracy (Routledge, publication expected October 2026)

Media Coverage

https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/october-2018/aha-member-spotlight-rachel-johnston-white

Social Media

Country Focus

France

Expertise by Geography

France, Western Europe

Expertise by Chronology

Modern, 20th century, 21st century

Expertise by Topic

Colonialism, Genocide, Holocaust & Nazi Persecution, Human Rights, Military, Politics, Rebellion & Revolution, Religion, Women, World War II