Biography
I am a historian of Haiti, Africa and the French colonial empire. My current post-doctoral research focuses on how small states, particularly Haiti, at the League of Nations and United Nations used the Mandates/Trusteeship system to press for better conditions and ultimately decolonization in Africa. I am also a Digital Humanities practitioner. For many years I have been involved with a SSHRC-funded project creating a database with French East India Company records. I am also working to launch a website based around a Haitian newspaper from Paris in the 1890s including translations, annotations and critical analysis. As a video essayist and a frequent contributor to scholarly podcasts and websites, I am interested in teaching about the underdeveloped world and deconstructing racist narratives in sport and popular culture. I have taught numerous undergraduate courses in Latin American and European history, as well as in the Digital Humanities. I have published several academic articles and won various distinctions including the Article Prize for Emerging Scholars from the Canadian Association of Latin American and Caribbean Studies and the SSHRC Doctoral Scholarship to Honour Nelson Mandela. I am also an active musician and translator.
Education
B.A. University of Guelph, 2014
M.A. University of Guelph, 2016
Ph.D. York University, 2025
Selected Publications
With Margaret Schotte. Forthcoming. “Anonymous Matelots: Recovering Invisible Individuals from Merchant Company Records,” French History, special issue on ‘Dirty Data and New Quantitative Histories.’
2024. “Haitians in Africa and Africa in Haiti: Suzanne Comhaire-Sylvain and Changing Views of Africa Among Haiti’s Elites.” Archipélies 17.
2020. “Haitian Creole Comes of Age: Philology, Orthography, Education and Literature in the ‘Haitian Sixties.’” Journal of Haitian Studies 26 no. 1: 4–36.
2019. “Kreyòl Anba Duvalier: A Circuitous Solution to the Creole Problem?” New West Indian Guide 93 no. 3-4, 231-257.
2019. “L’Ouverture, 1901–1915: Sylvain, the École Nationale, and the opening of a Haitian Creole debate.” Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 44 no. 1: 22–39.
2018. “Occupying Creole: The Crisis of Language Under the US Occupation of Haiti.” Journal of Haitian Studies 24 no. 1: 4–24.
