His scholarship encompasses abandoned children, the welfare state, gender violence, masculinity, and new forms of historical writing. He documented the fate of his grandparents, Jewish refugees from Poland in occupied France, eventually murdered in Auschwitz in 1943, in A History of the Grandparents I Never Had (Stanford UP, 2016).
He received the Prix Médicis in 2016 for Laëtitia ou la fin des hommes, « an openly feminist book » that tells the story of a young girl murdered at the age of 18,[4][5]
His book History Is a Contemporary Literature (Cornell UP, 2018) offers perspectives on the writing of History, and the relationship between Literature and the social sciences. Jablonka argues that History, along with Sociology and Anthropology, can "achieve greater rigor and wider audiences by creating a literary text, written and experienced through a broad spectrum of narrative modes and rhetorical figures".[6] Conversely, a whole range of literary texts —travel logs, memoirs, autobiographies, testimonies, diaries, life stories, and news reports— can implement methods and lines of reasoning inspired by the social sciences.
His book A History of Masculinity: From Patriarchy to Gender Justice (Allen Lane, 2022) reimagines the cultures and norms that shape ideas of the “male self”. Arguing that “men are trapped in a gender prison”,[7] he offers a reflection on ancient and modern masculinities, gender justice, and a guide to being a ‘just man’ (un homme juste in French).[8]
Jablonka, Ivan (2006). Ni père ni mère. Histoire des enfants de l'Assistance publique, 1874-1939. Paris: Seuil. ISBN9782020839310. OCLC469857881.
Jablonka, Ivan (2007). Enfants en exil : transfert de pupilles réunionnais en métropole, 1963-1982. Paris: Seuil. ISBN9782020932295. OCLC470860322.
Bantigny, Ludivine; Jablonka, Ivan, eds. (2009). Jeunesse oblige : histoire des jeunes en France, XIXe-XXIe siècle. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. ISBN9782130566922. OCLC298926343.
Jablonka, Ivan (2010). Les Enfants de la République : l'intégration des jeunes de 1789 à nos jours. Paris: Seuil. ISBN9782020908177. OCLC652449834.
Jablonka, Ivan (2013). Nouvelles perspectives sur la Shoah. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. ISBN9782130619277. OCLC835412430.
Jablonka, Ivan (2014). L'Enfant-Shoah. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. ISBN9782130592280.
Jablonka, Ivan (2018). En camping-car. Paris: Seuil. ISBN9782757875452.
Jablonka, Ivan (2021). Un garçon comme vous et moi. Paris: Seuil. ISBN9782021470079.
Works in English
Jablonka, Ivan (2016). A History of the Grandparents I Never Had. Stanford: Stanford UP. ASINB01DZVDXPE.
Jablonka, Ivan (2018). History Is a Contemporary Literature. Manifesto for the Social Sciences. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP. ASINB076VTYP3H.
Jablonka, Ivan (2022). A History of Masculinity: From Patriarchy to Gender Justice. London: Penguin/Allen Lane. ISBN978-0241458792.
Jablonka, Ivan (2008), « Fictive Kinship: Wards and Foster Parents in Nineteenth-Century France », in Susan Broomhall (ed.), Emotions in the Household, 1200-1900, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, p. 269 - 284.
Jablonka, Ivan (2011), « Children and the State », in Ed Berenson, Vincent Duclert, Cristophe Prochasson (eds.), The French Republic, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011, p. 315 – 323.
Jablonka, Ivan (2013), « Social Welfare in the Western World and the Rights of Children (19th–21st centuries) », in Paula Fass (ed.), The Routledge History of Childhood in the Western World, New York: Routledge, 2013, p. 380 – 399.
Jablonka, Ivan (2016), « History and Comics, » Books and Ideas, 30 May 2016.[29]
Jablonka, Ivan (2018), "The Future of the Human Sciences," French Politics, Culture, and Society, Vol. 36, No. 3, December 2018, p. 109 – 117.