Prof. Dr. Benoît Henriet

Benoît Henriet (MA ULB 2012, PhD USL-B 2016) is Assistant Professor of History at the VUB. His research focuses on the colonial and post-colonial history of Congo, seen from a bottom-up perspective. He teaches introductory and specialized courses in contemporary history and history of globalization, as well as on postcolonial critique and historical writing. He also supervises research on the history of labour, power, culture and governance in colonial and post-colonial Central Africa, on oral and visual methodologies applied to historical research and on global, postcolonial and ‘imperial’ history-writing. 

After completing his PhD, he was a short-term postdoctoral fellow at the Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin in the spring of 2017. In 2017-2018 he was associate researcher at the African Studies Centre of the University of Oxford, working on the history of knowledge production and organised labour in early post-colonial haut-Katanga. He has published articles in journals such as the Canadian Journal of African Studies, Vingtième Siècle, the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History and the International Journal of African Historical Studies.

Fields of specialization: 

• History of the Congo / Geschiedenis van Congo
• Colonial and post-colonial history / Koloniale en post-koloniale geschiedenis
• Postcolonial thinking / Postkoloniale denken
• History of globalization / Geschiedenis van de globalisering
• Historical anthropology / Historische antropologie
• African studies / Afrikaanse studies