Yvonne Bongert

The first female professor at the Lille Faculty of Law (1957-1965), Yvonne Bongert was a specialist in the history of criminal law and procedure.

In 1948, she defended a doctorate on secular courts of justice between the 10th and the 13th century. Having passed the agrégation competitive teaching exam, she became a professor at the Faculty of Law in Indochina in 1951, then in Rennes two years later.

Then, she joined the Lille Faculty of Law, where from 1961 she held the public law history chair. At the same time, she directed the Institute of Legal, Political and Economic Studies of Cambodia (1955-1959), followed by the Faculty of Law of Cambodia from 1957 onwards. She left Lille to join the Faculty of Law in Paris, where she was awarded her emeritus in 1989.

Much appreciated by her students in Lille, she kept in touch with some of them through the Society for the History of Law and Institutions in Flanders, Picardy and Walloon, in which she was heavily involved.

Notes written by Nathalie Barré-Lemaire.

This short profile was written as part of the first edition of the Université avec un grand Elles (Women Who Shaped the University) exhibition held in 2019.