Pascal Blanchard

About Pascal Blanchard

Holder of a PhD in History from the Panthéon-Sorbonne University, Pascal Blanchard specializes in three areas of historical analysis: issues of diversity and immigration, the history of companies and brand heritage, and the history of media and communication.

He is an internationally recognized expert on diversity issues, both in the present (business, discrimination, equality, representation, memory…) and in the past (slavery, colonization, immigration, the history of sport and football). He is also a specialist in the “colonial fact,” the immigration from the “South” to France, colonial imagery, and the history of the body. For the past 20 years, he has led the Achac Research Group, which brings together 500 researchers worldwide.

He is also a recognized historian of corporate history. In this capacity, he advises brands, institutions, and companies on enhancing their heritage and history: brand museums, advertising images related to brands in various specific sectors.

Finally, he is an expert in communication and the history of media, focusing on issues of imagery and its interpretation. He is an associate researcher at the Communication and Politics Laboratory of the CNRS.

Pascal Blanchard showcases his diverse areas of expertise through various activities.

He has published or co-directed around thirty works with major publishing houses, including A Century of Immigration from the South to France (19th-20th centuries), a box set of eight beautiful books with 4,000 iconographic documents. He has also published about ten illustrated works on the brands of major companies.

He regularly appears in television media (he is a columnist on France Culture and Arte), radio, or newspapers, in the form of opinion pieces or interviews.

Pascal Blanchard is also an author, director, and producer (within the production company Bâtisseurs d’images productions). He has participated in more than fifteen productions over the past ten years, including several television documentaries (Les Zoos humains, Arte, 2002; Paris couleurs, France 3, 2005; Des noirs en couleur. The History of Afro-Caribbean and New Caledonian Players in the French National Football Team, Canal +, 2008; the trilogy Noirs de France, France 5, 2012).

Finally, he creates exhibitions on the theme of the gaze on the other, colonization, identities, and immigration, such as Images et Colonies (1993-2001) in Europe and Africa. He recently created (2011-2012) with Lilian Thuram an important exhibition at the Musée du quai Branly (265,000 visitors) titled Exhibitions. The Invention of the Savage (awarded as exhibition of the year in 2012), and he designed a traveling exhibition in 2012 on The History of African Americans in France.

Pascal Blanchard is often invited to participate in forums, conferences, or congresses, both in France and abroad. Presentations can be offered based on films, at exhibition sites or in museums, as well as in the context of cultural events.

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