As a professor, Dr. Melissa K Byrnes often reminds her students that she cares far more about how they think than what they know. She believes in a rigorous, interactive classroom environment. Her courses confront issues that have been hotly debated for centuries; her goal is to provide her students with a vocabulary and an analytical framework that allow them to grapple with these questions on their own. She expects students to leave her class with more open questions than they arrived with. Her job is to complicate their understandings of the world, to break down preconceptions and easy assumptions.

Byrnes received her PhD from Georgetown University in 2008, her MSFS from Georgetown University in 2003, and her BA from Amherst College in 2000. Since Jan. 2017, she has been regular contributor to Lawyers Guns & Money. She has been affiliated with the American Historical Association, the Council for European Studies, the Society for French Historical Studies, the Western Society for French History, the French Colonial Historical Society, the Social Science History Association, and the World History Association. 

Byrnes’s research focuses on migration, activism, rights, race, religion, imperialism, and decolonization. Her first book, Making Space: Neighbors, Officials, and North African migrants in the Suburbs of Paris and Lyon (University of Nebraska Press, 2023), examines post-1945 community activism around migrant rights and welfare. She has published peer-reviewed articles on how urban development programs excluded or included North Africans in local communities, the ways French officials supported Muslim practices to shore up their imperial power, the effects of imperial and racial ideologies on Franco-Portuguese diplomacy during decolonization, and transnational activist student networks between France and Portugal around the events of May-June 1968. She has also co-edited a volume on Fertility, Family and Social Welfare: The Colonial Politics of Population (Palgrave, 2023).

Byrnes has received multiple grants and fellowships to aid in her research and teaching including:

• Research Assistantship Program (Southwestern University), Spring 2021 and 2023-24.
• Competitive Development Funding (Southwestern University), 2011-12, 2012-13, 2013-14, 2014-15, 2015-16, and 2023-24.
• Study Abroad Fellow, 2023-24.
• Garey Competitive Course Release Sabbatical (Southwestern University), 2022-23.
• Social Justice Fellowship (Southwestern University), 2016-17.
• First Texas Bank, funds for Philanthropy FYS grant project, 2017 and 2018.
• Atmos Energy, funds for Philanthropy FYS grant project, 2018.
• Travel Grant (University of Portsmouth), Beyond Françafrique workshop, Feb. 2017.
• Faculty-Student Project Funding (Southwestern University), 2016-17.
• Sam Taylor Fellowship, General Board of Higher Education and Ministry of the United Methodist Church, 2013.
• Georgetown Health Foundation, matching funds for Philanthropy FYS grant project, 2011, 2012, and 2013.
• ACLS/Mellon Recent Doctoral Recipient Fellowship, 2009-10.
• ACLS/Mellon Dissertation Completion Fellowship, 2007-08.
• Bourse Jeanne Marandon, Association des Professeurs Français et Francophones de l’Amérique, 2005-06.

Books

• Making Space: Arguing for North African Rights in the Suburbs of Paris and Lyon, 1945-1974 (University of Nebraska Press, France Overseas: Studies in Empire and Decolonization Series, 2023).
• Co-edited with Margaret Andersen, Fertility, Family, and Social Welfare between France and Empire: The Colonial Politics of Population (Palgrave Macmillan, New Directions in Welfare History Series, 2023).
  • “Introduction,” co-authored with Margaret Andersen.
  • “Criminal Fertility: Policing North African Families after Decolonization.”

Journal Articles

•  “Anti-Salazarism and Transnational Solidarity: Franco-Portuguese Student Activism in the 1960s,” French History and Civilization, Vol. 10 (August 2021), pp. 4-18.
• “Diplomacy at the end of empire: Evolving French perspectives on Portuguese colonialism in the 1950s and 1960s,” Cold War History Vol. 19, No. 4 (November 2019), pp. 477-491.
• “Ramadan in the Republic: Imperial Necessity and Religious Assistance in the Rhône Department,” French Cultural Studies, Vol. 28, No. 1 (February 2017), pp. 5-16.
• “Liberating the Land or Absorbing a Community: Managing North African Migration and the Bidonvilles in Paris’s Banlieues,” French Politics, Culture & Society [special issue: “Algerian Legacies in Metropolitan France”], Vol. 31, No. 3 (Winter 2013), pp. 1-20.
• “Teaching the French Revolution from the Inside Out: Views from Egypt and the Caribbean,” World History Bulletin, Vol. XXVI, no. 1 (Spring 2010).

Popular Press

• Regular contributor, Lawyers Guns & Money, Jan. 2017-present
• “Saint-Denis, Solidarity, and Security,” Lawyers, Guns & Money, 3 Dec. 2015.
• “Solidarity and ‘Je suis Paris,’” Lawyers, Guns & Money, 18 Nov. 2015.
• “Racism, not Religion, is at the Root of European Attacks,” Austin American-Statesman, 28 Mar. 2015.
• “The First World War Before it was the First World War,” Austin American-Statesman, 26 Jul. 2014.
• “Last Word: Teaching Philanthropy and the Liberal Arts,” Southwestern Magazine, Spring 2014.
• “Movie evokes ancient desire to loot-and rescue-culture,” Austin American-Statesman, 6 Apr. 2014.
• “Why a History of Human Rights?” The Megaphone, 30 Oct. 2008.

Book Reviews

• Megan Brown, The Seventh Member State, Tocqueville 21 forum (February 2023).
• Jean Beaman, Citizen Outsider: Children of North African Immigrants in France, H-France Review, Vol. 21, No. 137 (August 2021).
• Paul Silverstein, Postcolonial France: Race, Islam and the Future of the Republic, H-France Review, Vol. 19, No. 43 (March 2019).
• Eric T. Jennings, Free French Africa in World War II: The African Resistance, Journal of Military History, Vol. 80, No. 3 (July 2016), pp. 932-944.
• Susan J. Palmer, The New Heretics of France: Minority Religions, la République, and the Government-Sponsored “War on Sects,” Journal of Religion, (April 2014).
• Panikos Panayi and Pippa Virdee, eds., Refugees and the End of Empire: Imperial Collapse and Forced Migration in the Twentieth Century, Journal of World History, Vol. 24, No. 3 (September 2013), pp. 733-735.
• John R. Bowen, Why the French Don’t Like Headscarves: Islam, the State, and Public Space, Nationalities Papers, Vol. 36, No. 3 (July 2008), pp. 586-588.

Guest Lectures

• “Diplomacy at the End of Empire,” Guest appearance (remote) in Dr. Megan Brown’s seminar on Postwar Western Europe at Swarthmore College, 22 Apr. 2020.
• “Doing Good and Doing It Well,” Lecture, Newcomers and Friends of Georgetown, Georgetown, TX, 1 Feb. 2018.
• “Doing Good and Doing It Well,” Keynote Address, Seeds of Strength Annual Luncheon, Georgetown, TX, 22 Sep. 2016.
• “The History of Art Looting,” animated video for Digital Speakers Bureau, Center for European Studies, University of Texas at Austin (published Jul. 2015).
• “Working—and Getting Hired—at a Small Liberal Arts College,” Department of History, Georgetown University, 23 Oct. 2013.
• Discussion leader, International Day of Peace Celebration, Moksha Yoga and Pilates, Georgetown, TX, 21 Sep. 2013.
• “Migration and Municipal Foreign Policy: North Africans in the Suburbs of Paris and Lyon”; Institute for Historical Studies Workshop Series on “Reinventing Diplomacy,” University of Texas at Austin, 15 Apr. 2013.
• “La Comparaison et la vue d’en bas: L’immigration maghrébine à l’échelle locale,” guest lecturer for Dr. Nancy Green’s research seminar, “L’Histoire comparée et les migrations contemporaines,” École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, 17 November 2009.
• “La recherche de leur place: Deux communes et leurs populations nord-africaines,” invited speaker for the ongoing program, “Histoire des migrations internationales et des luttes contre les discriminations en Europe”; Migrinter and the Espace Mendès France; Poitiers, France; 9 November 2009.

Recent Conferences

• “Activist Echoes: Connecting French Anti-Salazarism to Opposition to the Algerian War”; joint Society for French Historical Studies (SFHS) and Western Society for French History (WSFH) Annual Conference, Detroit, MI, 16-18 Mar. 2023.
• Chair, “New Books on Transnational Activism”; SFHS-WSFH, 2023.
• “Securing Thresholds: Housing, Family Size, and Alleged Delinquency”; WSFH Annual Conference, Victoria, BC, 3-5 Nov. 2022.
• “Criminal Fertility: Policing North African Families after Decolonization”; Society for French Historical Studies (SFHS) Annual Conference, Charlotte, NC, 24-26 Mar. 2022.
• Comment, Danielle Beaujon’s “Policing ‘Algerian Criminals,’ 1926-1938” for Reading, Researching, and Writing the French Empire workshop series, 17 Feb. 2021.
• “Anti-Salazarism and Transnational Solidarity: Franco-Portuguese Student Activism in the 1960s”; Joint Society for French Historical Studies Conference and George Rudé Seminar in French History and Civilisation, virtual (hosted from Auckland, New Zealand), 5-31 Jul. 2020.
• Webinar (planned as a roundtable), “Teaching French History in a Global Frame”; Joint Society for French Historical Studies Conference and George Rudé Seminar in French History and Civilisation.