Sylvie Bodineau

Sylvie Bodineau MA, PhD is an anthropologist. After 20 years of experience in social work and humanitarian child protection intervention, she decided in 2009 to join the academic world to reflect on her profession and strengthen collaboration between research and intervention. 

All along her career as a program manager and as a consultant, she has guided numerous projects from inception onward, among them: in West Africa (2000-2008) training military staff on children’s rights and protection in conflict setting and training social worker along with security forces to address child trafficking ; in Syria (2007-2008) evaluating the national child protection system and setting up a family protection unit ; in the DRC since 2002, advising  humanitarian child protection systems to protect street children and support the reintegration of child soldiers. Considered an expert on child protection in emergencies by the humanitarian community, she’s also been contributing to elaborate and review guidelines and framework documents. 

Along her academic career, she has been rewarded with prestigious Canadian distinctions : a Vanier and Trudeau scholar between 2013 and 2017 supporting her doctoral research at Laval University (Quebec), she has also been a Banting postdoctoral fellow between 2019 and 2021 at York university (Toronto). Her doctoral and postdoctoral research projects have focused on former child soldiers, both within the context of humanitarian child protection and of their civilian life as young adults.

Her current activity as an independent researcher broadly explores the different worlds of humanitarian intervention, human rights, and protection of children and youth, with a critical eye embracing the complexity of the circuits between policy making and practice. She is the author of a book entitled Figures d’enfants soldats. Puissance et vulnérabilité. (Nouvelle collection Nord-Sud. Presses de l’Université Laval. Québec) and several book chapters and articles, the most recent ones focusing on child soldiers, the humanitarian world and on her collaboration with a Congolese research assistant.