Catherine Benoit

Catherine Benoit is a Professor of Anthropology at Connecticut College, where she has been a faculty member since 2001. She is a prominent scholar specializing in Caribbean and Indian Ocean studies, with particular focus on Haiti, St. Martin, Guadeloupe, French Guiana, and other French overseas territories.

Her educational background includes:

• Licence d'histoire de l'art et d'archéologie, Université la Sorbonne - Paris I
• Licence d'ethnologie, Université Paris VII
• Diplôme d'anthropologie historique de L'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS)
• Doctorat d'anthropologie de l'EHESS

Professor Benoit's research interests have developed in two primary directions. First, she explores the emergence and construction of individual and collective identities in the Caribbean in relation to the bodily experience of space and nature, with a particular focus on how dooryard gardens define Creole worldviews and self. Second, she examines immigration issues and border reinforcement in the Caribbean and Indian Ocean regions, with special attention to necropolitics, borders, (im)mobilities, and maritime cemeteries. Her work on medical pluralism in the therapy management of immigrant patients living with AIDS or sickle-cell disease has informed her current research on deportation regimes in French overseas territories.

Her scholarly contributions reveal a consistent focus on the intersections of space, identity, and power in postcolonial contexts, particularly examining how French immigration policies impact Caribbean and Indian Ocean communities. Benoit's work bridges anthropological theory with urgent contemporary issues of migration, border enforcement, and medical sovereignty.

Professor Benoit has received significant recognition for her work, including:

• National Endowment for the Humanities award
• Wenner-Gren Foundation award
• French Ministry of Culture award
• Agence nationale de recherche sur le Sida award
• Fondation pour la recherche médicale award
• UNESCO award

She has been a post-doctoral fellow at the African American Studies Department, University of California, Berkeley; Dumbarton Oaks, Harvard University; and at the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, at Yale University. Professor Benoit is currently affiliated with several collaborative international research programs sponsored by the French Ministry of Research, French Ministry of Justice, Université des Antilles, Université de Guyane and Université d'Amiens, where she examines French regimes of necropolitics in overseas territories.