"This October (2023) I will be headed to Aix-en-Provence, a city in the South of France, not too far from Marseille. I will be doing research at the Archives Nationales d'Outre Mer (ANOM), where all of France's colonial documents are housed. Hopefully, I will also travel to the French Caribbean territories of Martinique and Guadeloupe.
My dissertation focuses on the social, political, and economic effects of hurricanes and earthquakes in the French Caribbean, Louisiana, and New France (Canada). Such disasters also affected the social relations among French colonists, enslaved Africans, and Indigenous peoples. While their stories are often hidden, disasters sometimes shed light on the experiences of non-European peoples living under French imperialism.
My project aspires to be in conversation with scholars of disasters and the Atlantic world. While I will be spending most of my time in the archive I am looking forward to the charm and Mediterranean climes of southern France."