Alain TIREFORT

Coordinator of the specialisation History – Geography

Tirefort
Université des Antilles et de la Guyane
Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines
Département d'Histoire
B.P. 7207
F – 97275 Schœlcher CEDEX

Email: alain.tirefort@wanadoo.fr
Office contact +596 5 96 72 74 76

Teaching and research interests

As a contemporary historian I have been working since the 1980s on societies and “colonial situations”, especially in relation to Black Africa and Madagascar in the 19th and 20th century. This research has resulted, among other things, in two PhDs, obtained at the EHESS and then at Bordeaux III. Lecturer and researcher at the UAG since 2004, I am now interested in colonial situations in Martinique, from the Second Empire to departmentalisation – 1852-1946 –, but I have not abandoned a comparative, African and Malagasy vision.

My methods which could be qualified as “anthropological”, based on a variety of sources – demographic, administrative, judiciary, literary, iconographical and oral… –, have taught me to take an interest in the behaviour of both individuals and collectives, in relationships of power, in minorities and outcasts; they have brought me to asking questions about the representation of the one by the other and the instrumentalisation of mémoire.

In this field of research, the Martinican 19th century opens up intriguing vistas.

Courses

Principal publications