Christine Chivallon is both an anthropologist and a geographer affiliated to the “LC2S” Research Center (Laboratoire Caribéen de Sciences sociales), Université des Antilles (Martinique), from the 1st of March 2021). She was previously affiliated to “Les Afriques dans le Monde” (Africas in the World) at Sciences Po Bordeaux and to « Passages » at the Université Bordeaux Montaigne. She was elected as Director of Research at the CNRS (National Center of Scientific Research) in 2007 by the “Space and Society” academic committee and was promoted to First Class Director by this same committee in October 2014. She received her “Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches” in Anthropology in 2012 from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris. In 2007, along with the late Prof Barry Chevannes, University of the West Indies, Prof Robert Lafore, Sciences Po Bordeaux, and Prof Justin Daniel, Université des Antilles, she founded the FIFCA (Filière Internationale France Caraïbe), a Joint Research and Teaching Programme in which she is still involved at Sciences Po Bordeaux. The “FIFCA” includes a teaching curriculum for co-diploma BSc/MSc in International Politics and Cooperation and gives access to doctoral studies. This programme receives financial support from the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research (Department of International Relations), the French Embassy in Jamaica and the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme of Paris (FMSH). She is also the founder of the Research Group “Mondes Caraïbes et transatlantiques en mouvement” which brings together several institutions, mainly the FMSH Paris.
The research conducted by Christine Chivallon focuses on materiality, space and identity, mainly in the Caribbean societies and through Caribbean migration in Europe, including research on the memory of slavery and cultural trauma. She also works on theories of cultures, production of knowledge and postcolonial and decolonial controversies. In 2000, she was awarded the Bronze Medal from the CNRS for her body of scientific work. She has been elected as Visiting Fellow at Kellogg College, University of Oxford since 2013.