Université Libre de Bruxelles

Faculty Member, Laboratoire d'Anthropologie des Mondes Contemporains (Lamc)

Assistant Professor

About

An anthropologist working in southern Benin since 2000, my current research themes are [a] funerals, mourning and bereavement, [b] religious change, and [c] the memory of slavery.
In my PhD (2006) on mourning and funerals in southern Benin, I have tried to show the diverse processes leading people to invest important amounts of resources in funerals, as well as the complexities of current changes in family dynamics, as well as of religious affiliations and changes.
Additionally, I have been involved since 2002 in research on the transnationalization of Pentecostalism in West Africa, as well as between Africa and Europe, focusing on the logics of organization of Pentecostal networks and their transnational expansions.
Finally, the memory of slavery has been at the heart of new research I have conducted since 2006. Starting from the gap existing in today's southern Benin between the profusion of official discourses on the Atlantic slave trade on the one hand, and pervading silences on the issue of local slavery on the other, I am attempting here to highlight the social patterns shaping this situation (including the issue of "cultural heritage"), as well as the dynamics of categories of identification that emerged from local slavery in the region of Abomey and Ouidah.

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