Julia Foudraine

Julia Foudraine is an external PhD candidate at the African Studies Centre Leiden (ASCL) and is working on her research project ‘International labour solidarity: The Netherlands and South Africa during the international anti-apartheid struggle, 1971-1994’.

Her research focuses on the international labour solidarity between Dutch labour unions and the black South African labour movement during the international anti-apartheid struggle. The core of this research evolves around the complexity of international solidarity between labour unions with deep ties on many different levels (i.e. historical, colonial, cultural, and migratory).

Julia holds a Bachelor’s degree in History, with a specialization in African History and a minor in Postcolonial Studies, from Utrecht University (2012) and a Research Master’s degree in African Studies from Leiden University (2014). During her Research Master, she conducted research in South Africa on the labour union AMCU (the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union). AMCU is worldwide known for its involvement in a violent strike in August 2012, the so-called ‘Marikana Massacre’.

Besides her position as a part-time PhD candidate at the ASCL, Julia has worked (and is still working) at several educational institutions. In her current position, she is a student counsellor, supervises Master students who are writing a thesis proposal, teaches workshops on academic writing and qualitative research and is responsible for the educational development of thesis trajectories.

Key words: South African history, labour movements, anti-apartheid, solidarity, The Netherlands and South Africa