My dissertation, Radio Island: Sounding Freedom and Identity in Réunion and Across Oceanic Worlds (in progress), explores how Radio FreeDom, Réunion Island’s largest local radio station, shapes understandings of freedom, sovereignty, and belonging. Located in the Indian Ocean, Réunion is a French overseas department and part of the European Union, though geographically closer to Africa and Madagascar. This unique political status, along with the island’s vehicular language (Créole) and its multicultural history, create a rich context to study tensions between political inclusion, postcolonial identity, and local sovereignty.
Through Radio FreeDom’s open “free antenna” platform—where any listener can speak live on air—I examine how Réunionese people navigate their relationship with the French state, the Indian Ocean region, and their Creole identity. Using both historical and ethnographic methods, my research contributes to critical analyses of France’s colonial legacy, republican ideals, and non-sovereign territories’ struggles with freedom and autonomy. My work also reinterprets Atlantic stories of slavery and creolization through Indian Ocean histories, offering new perspectives on freedom and sovereignty.
Additionally, I engage with public scholarship as a Project Manager and Researcher for The Oceans Lab at UM and ReConnect/ReCollect: Reparative Connections to Philippine Collections at UM, two digital humanities projects at the University of Michigan. Both initiatives aim to build digital resources that communicate academic research to broader audiences.
As a first-generation college student, I am deeply committed to teaching. I have taught History of European Integration and Anthropology 101 at the University of Michigan and served as an Adjunct Instructor in Anthropology at Utah Valley University, where I taught courses such as Introduction to Sociocultural Anthropology, Applied Anthropology, and Myth, Magic, Religion. Before pursuing my PhD, I worked as an English Instructor in high schools in Réunion and French Guiana.
