Audrey Célestine was born in Dunkerque and grew up in Martinique where her family (re?)settled in the mid-1980s. At the time, the city of Fort-de-France was implementing an ambitious cultural policy and for a few dozen francs a year, the city’s children could take theater, music or dance classes. Growing up in the shade of the “cursed fig tree” or “Manman dlo”, learning that the Caribbean and Africa are lands of authors, creators and artists: this marks a life trajectory. She crossed the Atlantic several times, at the age of 18 to attend a preparatory school in Paris and to study at Sciences Po, and at the age of 20 to spend a year in the United States, where she returned several times to conduct fieldwork and teach. Audrey Célestine is now a lecturer at the University of Lille. Her research is at the crossroads of history, sociology, and political science and focuses on various aspects of the construction of individual and collective identities in France, the United States and the Caribbean. She alternates between writing academic works and essays between social sciences and intimate narratives.
