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Dr. de Rode is a historian of the French-American alliance during the American Revolution, known for combining original archival discoveries with public-facing scholarship. Raised between the Netherlands and France, she studied history at the University of Amsterdam (B.A., M.A.) and earned her Ph.D. in History of International Relations at the University of Paris VIII in 2019. During her Ph.D., she taught as an assistant professor at the University of Paris VIII and at Sciences Po.
Her doctoral research was based on a remarkable archival discovery at the Chastellux Castle (Burgundy, France) of more than 6,000 unpublished papers by Major General François-Jean de Chastellux (1734–1788), a long-overlooked but central figure in the French-American alliance. At the crossroads of cultural, military, social, and Atlantic history, her work revealed Chastellux’s crucial role as a soldier-philosopher in shaping French-American military, intellectual, scientific, and political cooperation. Her dissertation was adapted into the first full-length biography of Chastellux, published in 2022 and awarded the prestigious Prix Guizot of the Académie Française, as well as honors from the Sons of the American Revolution and the Daughters of the American Revolution. Click here for more on Research and Publications
She has received more than twenty research fellowships, including from George Washington’s Mount Vernon, Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, the American Philosophical Society, the American Revolution Institute, the Richard Lounsbery Foundation, Campus France, and the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds. She is currently the Gibson Postdoctoral Fellow at the Karsh Institute of Democracy at the University of Virginia.
In 2023, Iris and her partner, André Nakazawa, moved from Paris to Washington, D.C., placing them close to many of the archives and historic sites at the heart of her work. She is now writing a new book in English that brings the story of Chastellux, Washington, and the inner workings of the French-American alliance to American and international audiences, while advising museums, media productions, and 250th-anniversary projects on how to share this history with the wider public. Click here for more information on de Rode’s Public Engagement
