Dr. Yveline Alexis

Yveline Alexis is a historian of Haitian and Caribbean Studies who founded the historical consultant business Our Stories. She is the author of the award-winning book Haiti Fights Back: The Life and Legacy of Charlemagne Péralte with Rutgers University Press. The Times Literary Supplement listed the work as a 2021 Book of the Year. Alexis is working on a sequel to Haiti Fights Back about the women who resisted. Finally, she recently developed a course on Rest: Ideas and Praxis as part of an educational series about history and wellness.

Dr. Felix Jean-Louis III

Félix Jean-Louis is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine. He was born  to Haitian immigrants in Queens, New York. He is a historian of the African diaspora with specialization in Haitian, Caribbean,  African Americans, and Afro-Francophone histories. His research delves into the transnational contributions of elite Haitian men in redefining Black identity and combating racial subjugation globally. Jean-Louis’s work emphasizes Haitian and Haiti’s role in global Black consciousness, Pan-African solidarity, and anti-colonial movements. He is currently developing a monograph, Exporting the Revolution: Haitian Internationalism in the Age of Global Blackness, 1890-1944, which examines Haitian influence on global Black solidarity movements.

Dr. Milcar Jeff Dorce

Milcar Jeff Dorce was born in Petit-Goâve, Haiti. He is a lawyer admitted to the Paris Bar and a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Law of Université Laval, Canada. He received his bachelor’s degree in law from the Faculté de droit et des sciences économiques de Port-au-Prince (2013), his Master’s degree in Public Law from Université Toulouse Capitole, France (2016), and his Ph.D. in Public Law from Université de Bordeaux, France (2022). He has taught public law at several universities and is the founder of the Revue Haïtienne Droit et Société. His research focuses primarily on international investment law, investor-State dispute settlement, investment arbitration, human rights, environmental protection, climate change, Indigenous peoples, and decolonial approaches to international economic law. His scholarly work also addresses fair and equitable treatment, legitimate expectations, third-party funding in investment arbitration, and the evolving relationship between foreign investment protection and States’ regulatory autonomy. As a recipient of funding from the Chambre des notaires du Québec, he is currently preparing his first book, Investissements étrangers, environnement et droits humains : en quête d’une conciliation dans le contentieux arbitral, forthcoming with Éditions Thémis, Université de Montréal. He has published numerous scholarly articles and book chapters on international investment law, arbitration, human rights, democracy, environmental governance, and the changing architecture of international economic law.

Dr. Mamyrah Prosper

Mamyrah Dougé-Prosper is an Assistant Professor of Global and International Studies at the University of California, Irvine. She is also the director of the Center for Racial Justice at UCI. Dougé-Prosper’s work generally focuses on Black social movements. More specifically, her research centers around protest movements in 21st century Haiti. Dougé-Prosper has published in political magazines such as Black Agenda Report, LeftEast, Phenomenal World, Jacobin and NACLA as well as academic journals such as Women’s Studies Quarterly, International Studies Review, Kalfou, Small Axe, PoLAR and the Journal of Haitian Studies. She is completing her first manuscript titled Nation Against State: Development Contested in Occupied Haiti. Dougé-Prosper is currently a board member of Grassroots International. Between 2018 and 2024, she served as the coordinator of the Pan-African Solidarity Network with Community Movement Builders.

Dr. Robert Fatton

Robert Fatton Jr. was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and is the Ambassador Henry J. Taylor and Mrs. Marion R. Taylor Emeritus Professor of Politics, in the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia. He received his BA from Goshen College in 1976, and both his MA (1978) and Ph. D. (1981) from the University of Notre Dame. He served as Chair of the Department of Politics from 1997 to 2004; and Associate-Dean of the Graduate School at the University of Virginia from 2010 to 2012.  He is the author of several books and a large number of scholarly articles.  His publications include: Black Consciousness in South Africa (1986); The Making of a Liberal Democracy: Senegal’s Passive Revolution, 1975-1985 (1987); Predatory Rule: State and Civil Society in Africa (1992); Haiti’s Predatory Republic: The Unending Transition to Democracy (2002); The Roots of Haitian Despotism (2007);  Haiti: Trapped in the Outer Periphery (2014); and The Guise of Exceptionalism:  Unmasking the National Narratives of Haiti and the United States (2021).  He is also co-editor with R. K. Ramazani of The Future of Liberal Democracy: Thomas Jefferson and the Contemporary World (2004); and Religion, State, and Society (2009).  He is the recipient of the 2011 Award for Excellence of the Haitian Studies Association for his “commitment and contribution to the emerging field of Haitian Studies for close to a quarter of a century;” and the Association’s honored him with its “Lifetime Achievement Award” in 2023.

KEB

Kebert Bastien est né à Saint-Louis du Nord en Haïti. Celui qui ouvrit sa carrière de chanteur, sous le nom de Keb, en disant « Merde à la vie » a été durement et profondément marqué par le sort. Il n’avait que six ans quand son père disparut dans un naufrage retentissant. Cette blessure fondamentale fait de son coeur un creuset intarissable de révolte contre toutes les souffrances humaines, contre ceux qui les causent ou les entretiennent.

Chanteur résolument engagé, Kebert Bastien n’est pas un simple lanceur de brûlots. Ses textes, en créole ou en français, dénoncent autant qu’ils nourrissent l’espoir et un rêve collectif pour Haïti. Sa foi en l’humain constitue l’épicentre de toutes ses créations. Artiste doué d’une extrême sensibilité, Keb est un musicien inventif et exigeant qui construit méticuleusement ses albums autour d’un thème, d’un concept.

Son premier album (2014), Merde, aborde la vie en Haïti, une vie d’athlète. Son deuxième album (2015), Pwennfepa : 100 lane lokipasyon blan meriken, critique la néo-colonisation d’Haïti par les puissances occidentales et les forces onusiennes, et réclame la libération du pays cent ans après le début de l’Occupation américaine (1915-1934). Dans École Nord-Mâle (2017), son troisième opus, il s’engage pour une école émancipatrice et dénonce les dérives et les failles ou les faillites du système éducatif haïtien qu’il examine à tous les niveaux, du jardin d’enfants à l’université d’État, et sous toutes ses facettes : son sexisme, son mercantilisme, la colonialité du savoir qui y est produit. Dans Barikad Lanmou (2021), il déclame son amour pour sa famille, ses ami·es militant·es, pour son pays, et rend hommage à celles et ceux tombé·es au combat. Dans son dernier album, Mon Général Soleil, mon Kamoken, sorti en avril 2022, il célèbre le génie de Jacques Stephen Alexis, écrivain haïtien dont on a fêté le centenaire de la naissance le 22 avril 2022. Il redonne vie à cet enfant terrible de la littérature haïtienne, lâchement assassiné par les Tontons Macoute alors qu’il était âgé de 39 ans, et met en exergue sa combativité, ses idéaux pour Haïti, pour la Caraïbe et les Amériques.