BENOÎT HENRIET
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Elsene, Belgium Email: [email protected] Phone: +3226292577 Date of Birth: 14 August 1986
FUNDED POSITIONS
Since October 2018: Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
Assistant professor in of the contemporary era.
July 2017-October 2018: University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Research Associate in the History of Haut Katanga, funded by the ERC consolidator grant “Comparing the Copperbelt. Political Culture and Knowledge Production in Central Africa” (PI: Prof Miles Larmer).
May 2017 - June 2017 Centre Marc Bloch – Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany
Short-term postdoctoral fellow, funded by the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS)
December 2016 - April 2017 Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles, Belgium
Postdoctoral fellow, funded by the Belgian Federal Scientific Policy (BELSPO)
September 2012- December 2016 Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles, Belgium
PhD in History, Funded by the IAP BeJust 2.0, Belgian Federal Scientific Policy (BELSPO)
PhD dissertation: The Concession Experience. Power, Ecology and Labour in the Leverville Circle (Belgian Congo-1911-1940). Defended on 16 December 2016.
FIELDWORK
January-March and June-July 2018: Lubumbashi and Likasi, Democratic Republic of Congo
June 2017: Pointe-Noire, Republic of Congo: member a British Library-funded mission of recovering of endangered archives. July-September 2015: Kikwit and Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo
TEACHING
Vrije Universiteit Brussel: assistant professor in contemporary history (2018-…)
Maatschappijgeschiedenis II: van vroegmoderne Europa tot de postmoderne wereld
Geschiedenis van de Globalisering
Geschiedenis en Postkoloniale Kritiek
Werkcollege Belgen in de Wereld
Werkcollege Methodologie van de Geschiedenis: Onderdeel Hedendaagse Periode
History of Modern Africa
Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles : lecturer (2016-2017)
Images, films et société
Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles : teaching assistant (2012-2016)
Images, films et société
Histoire du droit et des institutions
University of Oxford (2017-…): guest lecturer
Methodologies in African Research
Université Libre de Bruxelles (2012-…): guest lecturer
Histoire de l’Afrique
Histoire des administrations
Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles (2012-2017) : guest lecturer
Histoire contemporaine
Historiographie et le métier d’historien
OTHER ACADEMIC ACTIVITIES
Reviewer for Emulations – revue de sciences sociales (2017-…), Politique Africaine (2018-…), Journal of Belgian History (2019-…), Urban History (2020-…), Revue d’Histoire Contemporaine de l’Afrique (2020-…), Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire (2020-…), Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History (2020-…)
Member of the supervising committee of Aurélie Bouvard, PhD candidate in History (ULB, 2017- …). Superviser : Prof. Amandine Lauro, and of Romain Landmeters, PhD candidate in History (Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles, 2017-…). Supervisor: Prof. Nathalie Tousignant
Member of the editorial board of Leuven University Press (2020-…).
PUBLICATIONS
Articles in peer-reviewed international journals
B. Henriet (under review), “Making the Post-Colonial University. Authenticité, Decoloniality and Knowledge Production in Lubumbashi, 1971-1981”, Journal of East African Studies.
B. Henriet, R. Loffman (2020), “‘We Are Left with Barely Anything’: Colonial Rule, Dependency, and the Lever Brothers in the Belgian Congo, 1911-1960”, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 48:1, p. 71-100.
B. Henriet (2018), “Facing the Talking Snake. Lukusu, anxieties and sense-making in 1933 Belgian Congo”, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 51:2, p. 219-241
B. Henriet (2018), “Anxieux ethnographes. Pratiques quotidiennes du pouvoir au Congo belge, 1930- 1940”, Vingtième Siècle, 4:140, p. 41-64.
B. Henriet, B. Piret, N. Tousignant (2017), “’Travail et Progrès’. Labour Legislation in Belgian Congo (1906- 1960)”, Rechtskultur, 5, (special issue “History of colonial law”), p. 36-47.
B. Henriet (2015), “’Elusive natives’. Escaping Colonial Control through Mobility in the Leverville Oil Palm Concession (Belgian Congo), 1923-1941”, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 49:2 (2015), p. 202-225.
B. Henriet (2015), “Colonial Law in the Making: Sovereignty and Property in the Congo Free State (1876-1908)”, The Legal History Review, 83:4 (2015), p. 339-361.
Monographs
B. Henriet (in print, 2021), Colonial Impotence. Virtue and Violence in a Congolese Concession (1911-1940), Berlin, De Gruyter
Book edition
M. Larmer, I. Pesa, B. Henriet, E. Guene, R. Taylor (eds.) (in print, 2021), Across the Copperbelt: Urban & Social Change in Central Africa's Borderland Communities, London, James Currey. Book chapters, internationally recognized scientific publishers
I. Pesa, B. Henriet (forthcoming), “Work, leisure and sociality in Likasi and Mufulira. Comparing the social life of mining communities through oral history”, in M. Larmer, I. Pesa, B. Henriet, E. Guene, R. Taylor (eds.) (in print, 2021), Across the Copperbelt: Urban & Social Change in Central Africa's Borderland Communities, London, James Currey.
A. Lauro, B. Henriet (2020), “Répression: le Congo après Léopold II, une colonie moins violente?”, in I. Godderis, A. Lauro, G. Vanthemsche (eds.), Le Congo Colonial. Une Histoire en Questions, Brussels, La Renaissance du Livre, p. 225-239/ “Repressie: was Congo na Leopold II een minder geweldadige kolonie?”, in Godderis, A. Lauro, G. Vanthemsche (eds.), Koloniaal Congo. Een Geschiedenis in Vragen, Antwerp, Polis, 2020, p. 211-224.
B. Henriet (2017), “Ordering the Wetlands. Police and legitimate violence in the Leverville concession (Belgian Congo, 1911-1920)”, in E. Blanchard, M. Bloemberger, A. Lauro (ed.), Policing in Colonial Empires. Cases, Connections, Boundaries (ca 1850-1970), Brussels-Bern, Peter Lang, p. 41-62.
Book reviews
B. Henriet, Church State and Colonialism in Southeastern Congo, 1860-1962, by Reuben Loffman, in The Low Countries Historical Review, 135 (2020).
A. Lauro, B. Henriet, Buffalo Bill in Central Africa. Tropical Cowboys. Western, Violence and Masculinity in Kinshasa, by Ch. Didier Gondola, in The Journal of African History, 59:1 (2018), p. 161-163.
B. Henriet, A Nervous State, Violence, Remedies and Reveries in Colonial Congo, by Nancy R. Hunt, in The Journal of Belgian History, 57:2-3 (2018), p. 257-259.
B. Henriet, Masculinity and Nationhood, 1830-1910. Constructions of Identity and Citizenship in Belgium, by Josephine Hoegaerts, in Contemporanea, 28:5 (2017).
Selected general audience contributions
Raf Scheers, “Kolonialisme gaat over ontmenselijking: interview met historicus Benoît Henriet”, EOS Wetenschap, 11 juni 2020.
A. Lauro, B. Henriet (2019), “10 idées reçues sur la colonisation belge”, Le Soir, 8 March 2019 / 'Geschiedschrijving vermag veel, maar kan niet alles: 10 misvattingen over de Belgische kolonisatie', Knack, 30 June 2019.
SELECTED PAPER PRESENTATIONS
B. Henriet, Colonial Impotence. Virtue and Violence in a Congolese Concession, Weekly seminar of the History Department, University of Bern, 18 September 2019. B. Henriet, Etudier l’histoire sociale d’une communauté minière postcoloniale. Sources orales et écrites du Shaba zaïrois (1970-1990), University of Geneva, 14 December 2018.
B. Henriet, Knowledge production in Shaba. Academia and the Zairian society, 1970-1990, panel “Knowledge production in (post)colonial Congo, Congo Research Network Conference, University of Oxford, 26-27 April 2018.
B. Henriet, Affective Space: Ambitions, Delusions and Memories in a Colonial Concession, panel “Space, Power and Extraction in Rural Congo”, African Studies Association Conference, Chicago, 16-18 November 2017.
B. Henriet (2016), Reading City Politics fifty years onwards. An outlook on Léopoldville- Kinshasa’s first years of independence, panel “Meet the Distinguished Congo Scholar Jean La Fontaine”, ASA UK Conference, University of Cambridge, 8 September 2016.
B. Henriet (2015), Deglobalizing the Postcolony ? The changing faces of palm oil labour around Kikwit (Democratic Republic of the Congo), 1911-2015. Conference “Empire, Labour, Citizenship. Current Research on Globalization”, Brussels, 19 November 2015.
B. Henriet (2015), A (Post)colonial Concession. Labour in Unilever Congolese “circles”, 1945-1965, Panel “Labor Policies and Practices across the Colonial and Post-colonial Eras”, 6th European Conference on African Studies (ECAS), Paris, 8-10 July 2015.
B. Henriet (2015), Violence, resistance and conflicted memories in the Kwango basin. The dismemberment of Maximilien Balot and its aftermaths (1931), Conference “Contemporary Congolese Studies”, University of Cambridge, 12 June 2015.
B. Henriet (2014), Les études postcoloniales dans le contexte latino-américain: José Bortoluci, Robert Jansen, Toward a postcolonial sociology: the view from Latin America (2013), doctoral seminar “Théories et pensées postcoloniales”, Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles – Université Libre de Bruxelles, 24 October 2014.
B. Henriet, A. Lauro (2014), Corps érotique / corps exotique en situation coloniale, conference cycle “Corps et Tabous”, Centre Culturel Omar Khayam, Brussels , 21 February 2014.
B. Henriet (2014), Travail forcé et cultures obligatoires en forêt équatoriale. Congo belge, 1910-1940, seminar “Violences coloniales, violences impériales. Comparaisons, circulations, transferts (XIXe-XXe siècles)”, Sciences Po, Paris, 6 February 2014.
SELECTED PANEL AND CONFERENCE ORGANISATION
Workshop “Congo Research Network PhD Days”, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 28th-29th May 2019. Co-organized with K. Pype (KU Leuven)
Lecture series “New Histories of Central Africa”, Vrije Universiteit Brussel – Université Libre de Bruxelles, November 2018 – April 2019. Co-organized with Amandine Lauro (ULB). Conference “Congolese Studies. Past, Present, Future”, St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, 26-27 April 2018. Co-organized with M. Larmer, T. Hendriks, R. Sarro (University of Oxford).
Double panel “Space, Power and Extraction in Rural Congo”, African Studies Association Conference, Chicago, 16-18 November 2017. Co-organized with T. Hendriks (University of Oxford).
Conference “Empire, Labour, Citizenship. Current Research on Globalization”, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Université Saint-Louis - Bruxelles, 18-20 November 2015. Main organizer.
Workshop “Forced and coerced labour: comparing colonial spaces and global conflicts”, CEGESOMA, Brussels, 19 March 2015. Co-organized with P. le Polain (Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles).
Panel “The worker’s body: physical labour, biopower and actors’ resistance in imperial contexts, 1850-1950”, 4th European Network in Universal and Global History Congress, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, 6 September 2014. Sole organizer.
Conference ”L’Afrique est-elle l’avenir du monde? Avec et autour de l’oeuvre d’Achille Mbembe”, KVS, Pianofabriek, Liège University, 30 March – 1st April 2014. Co-organized with S. Demart (Université de Liège), A. Lauro (Université Libre de Bruxelles), C. Pezeril (Université Saint- Louis - Bruxelles).
Monthly doctoral seminar «Théories et pensées postcoloniales». Co-organized with S. Demart (Université de Liège), A. Lauro (Université Libre de Bruxelles) C. Pezeril (Université Saint-Louis - Bruxelles), October 2013 - June 2015.
Workshop “Current Perspectives in Congo Research. Human and Social Sciences”, Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles, 20 December 2013. Co-organized with K. Pype (KU Leuven University).