Jean-Philippe Belleau

Anthropologist

Jean-Philippe Belleau is an anthropologist and Latin Americanist specializing in social anthropology, with a focus on Brazil and Haiti. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He holds a PhD from the Institut des Hautes Études d'Amérique Latine at the Sorbonne University in Paris. He also completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University in 2010. Before transitioning to academia, he spent over a decade working in human rights and development with organizations such as the United Nations, the Organization of American States (OAS), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and various NGOs, including Viva Rio and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems. He directed the Human Rights Education Fund in Haiti. His research interests encompass indigenous societies, human rights, mass violence, Brazilian cinema, and art. His 2024 book Killing the Elites: Haiti, 1964, is a historical ethnography examining a massacre in the town of Jérémie during the Duvalier regime.