Véronique Labonté has been named as the 2023 J.H. Stewart Reid Memorial Fellowship. The $5,000 scholarship honours the memory of CAUT’s first executive secretary.

Labonté is a doctoral candidate and research assistant at Université Laval. Her research focuses on the mediatization of counter-memorial narratives in post-conflict zones. Her research took her to several cities in Bosnia-Herzegovina. She analyzes how memory activists circulate alternative narratives in the public sphere.

Born in Quebec, Labonté attended the Centre de formation des journalistes in Paris. She worked with Quebec’s working group on journalism and the future of information. She also worked as a project lead at Télé-Québec. She was recently awarded a doctoral scholarship from the Fonds Georges-Henri Lévesque.

What drives you?

What motivates me in my research is to understand how, in sometimes exceedingly difficult contexts such as the post-conflict situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina, people manage to develop projects that bring hope for transitional justice and the future of the country.

What is the biggest lesson you have learned in academia?

I’ve learnt to push my limits and to trust myself. Interdisciplinary research and the reflective approach offer a great deal of freedom, but you must know how to manage it properly. The research field has also taught me to always keep an open mind and to expect the unexpected.

What career highlight are you most proud of?

Completing a doctorate with two young children, doing two fieldwork placements abroad, and living through a global pandemic is a great achievement. But I would also say that I am immensely proud to have forged lasting links with other researchers, first at university and then at the international conferences I attended.