Agnès Blais | Global Migration Processes

Agnès Blais

Agnès Blais

Agnès Blais is a research professional and the scientific coordinator of the Canada Research Chair in Global Migration Processes. In this capacity, she is involved in the organization of events, administration, student supervision and research development. An anthropologist, she is a specialist in post-Soviet Russia, migration and NGOs. Her doctoral dissertation, completed under the joint supervision of Université Laval and the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), is entitled: « Les combats des défenseurs des droits en Russie post-soviétique: l’exemple d’une association d’aide aux migrants et aux réfugiés » / “The struggles of human rights defenders in Moscow: the example of an association helping migrants and refugees”. She has five years of field experience as an interpreter and helper of migrants and refugees from different African countries in Moscow, helping them in their dealings with the Russian authorities, in the defense of their rights and in their interactions with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Her main research topics are: the rights movement, authoritarianism, forced migration, NGOs and solidarity in the post-Soviet space. She is developing a new research on Ukrainian displaced persons exiled in Quebec City and Winnipeg due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Photographic contribution

Michel Huneault is a documentary photographer and visual artist. Before devoting himself entirely to photography starting in 2008, he worked for more than ten years in international development. He holds an M.A. in Latin American Studies from the University of California at Berkeley, where he was a Rotary Peace Fellow, focusing on the role of collective memory in the aftermath of large-scale trauma. First in Berkeley and then in New York, he was a student and assistant to photographer Gilles Peress of the Magnum agency. Today, Michel Huneault is still interested in development, trauma, migration and other complex geographic realities, including the impacts of climate change. In 2016, he was awarded the Travers Foreign Corresponding Fellowship to continue his research on migration issues. In 2018, ROXHAM, his visual and sound project on the passage of asylum seekers from the United States to Canada was adapted into virtual reality by the National Film Board of Canada.