2023-2024 Award Winner
Quebec-born Véronique Labonté holds a Bachelor's degree in Journalism from UQAM and a Master's in Public Communications from Université Laval. She also attended the Centre de formation des journalistes in Paris. She has worked within Quebec's working group on journalism and the future of information and as project lead at Télé-Québec. In 2018, she began her doctoral research at ESEI, analyzing the role of the media and NGOs in post-conflict contexts with Aurélie Campana (Political Science) and Dominique Payette (Communications). Entitled, “Impossible mémoire collective ? Analyse des récits de contre-mémoire dans l’espace public de Bosnie-Herzégovine,” [Impossible Collective Memory? Analysis of Counter-Memorial Narratives in the Public Sphere in Bosnia-Herzegovina] her thesis draws on an analysis of media discourse and a series of interviews held with memorial activists in 2021-2022 in several cities across Bosnia-Herzegovina. In it, she explores the multiple strategies implemented by different actors to disseminate memorial narratives that distanced themselves from the nationalist paradigm that dominated the traditional public sphere. An article on her research will be published in 2023-2024 in the journal Memory Studies. She is also working on a chapter on digital counter-memorial spaces for a collective work on post-conflict representations, to appear in 2025. She is currently working as a research assistant for the Research Chair on Visual Culture in the International Studies department at Université Laval, with Professor Jessica Auchter. She is also an expert participant in the “Transformation of Conflict” working group for the “Slow Memory: Transformative Practices for Times of Uneven and Accelerating Change” project.