Bénédicte Boisseron was born in France of a French mother and a French-Caribbean father from Guadeloupe. She is now living in the U.S. as a professor and the chair of the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies (DAAS) at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her interdisciplinary research brings into conversation Caribbean studies, global Black studies, and environmental humanities through a literary, historical, and cultural lens.

Bénédicte’s first book, Creole Renegades: Rhetoric of Betrayal and Guilt in the Caribbean Diaspora received the Nicolás Guillén Outstanding Book Award from the Caribbean Philosophical Association and the Barbara T. Christian Literary Award honorable mention for best book in the humanities from the Caribbean Studies Association. Her second book, Afro-Dog: Blackness and the Animal Question is one of the first book-length studies on the intersection between Black life and animal rights in the history and culture of the Americas and the Black Atlantic.

Her current book project, titled The Hand That Feeds and supported by a 2022-2023 Guggenheim fellowship, is part memoir and part reflection on the power of food and taste in a French, Caribbean, and American context. Bénédicte is also at work on a short book about the everyday practice of living with dogs from an international perspective. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in her fields of expertise and has traveled extensively for research and for pleasure.