Rachèle-Jeanie Delva
Sociocultural Anthropologist
Sociocultural anthropologist, ethnographer, womanist, community-based research facilitator, and visual methods practitioner. I am currently a PhD candidate in sociocultural anthropology at Florida International University, expected to graduate in Spring 2027. I hold a Master of Arts in Community Leadership from Westminster University (2017).
Research Interests
My research interests focus on Caribbean womanhood, migration, diasporic identity, humanitarianism, and social memory, with particular attention to the lived experiences of Haitian across transnational and community spaces. Drawing from womanism and visual anthropology, I use collaborative and community-based methodologies — including photovoice, life history interviews, institutional ethnography, focus groups, and documentary storytelling — to explore how women negotiate identity, belonging, care, leadership, and inequality within contexts shaped by race, gender, and displacement. I am especially interested in the role of visuality, narrative, and autoethnography in expanding representations of Black women’s lives and community experiences. My research practice is also informed by embodied reflective approaches, including yoga teaching and an emerging interest in Black maternal birth experiences.
Current Research Projects
My current research examines how Haitian immigrant women in the diaspora represent, interpret, and negotiate their identities through participatory visual methods. I am particularly interested in how everyday practices of visibility, community engagement, and storytelling function as forms of resistance in contexts of migration and marginalization.
Institutional Ethnography
Using institutional ethnography, I investigate the hidden cultural processes, organizational environments, and power dynamics that shape Haitian women’s participation in Haitian diasporic humanitarian community organizations in Miami.
Photovoice Workshops
Grounded in photovoice participatory method, participants and I contributed to Haitian women’s epistemologies through photography and self-representation, creating visual narratives that resist invisibility and foreground their voices within Miami diasporic spaces. View gallery.
Life History Interview Archives
Through life history interviews, I create an archive of Haitian women’s emotions, memories, relationships, migration journeys, and community experiences while centering womanist understandings of identity building, belonging, and resistance in Miami.
Past Research Projects
This ethnographic research project examined how Haitian Creole mother-tongue instruction and culturally relevant pedagogy shaped literacy development and identity formation at a community school in Matènwa, La Gonâve, Haiti. Through participant observation, interviews, and focus groups with students, educators, and community members, the study explored how learning in Haitian Creole before transitioning into French literacy fostered reading comprehension, self-expression, cultural confidence, and community engagement. The project emerged from broader concerns about Haiti’s historically French-dominant education system and the ways linguistic inequality can distance children from their cultural identity and learning experience. Grounded in community-based qualitative research, the study highlighted how Creole-centered education can support both academic development and a stronger sense of Haitian identity, citizenship, and belonging. The research was later published in The Journal of Haitian Studies...
What follows is the explanation for how I made a mini documentary project, and the theories or lessons learned that informed my director’s choice.
Telling a story
In September 2021, thousands of Haitian migrants arrived at the Del Rio, Texas- Mexican border in caravans fleeing poor living conditions in South America. The Biden administration handled the crisis by referring to Title 42, which prevented asylum-seekers from petitioning for entry to the United States rights under Covid threats. As a result, thousands were deported to Haiti, and others camped for days at the U.S.-Mexico border in dehumanizing conditions...
Participatory Visual Research with People Who Inject Drugs in New York City
As part of a collaborative public health and ethnographic research project in New York City, I worked alongside researchers and community partners using participatory visual methods to explore the lived experiences of people who inject drugs. Conducted in partnership with harm reduction organizations in Harlem and Washington Heights, the project used PhotoVoice methodology, ethnographic observation, and an adapted ORA framework (Observe, Relate, Alternatives) to document how participants navigate addiction, stigma, housing insecurity, violence, social isolation, and community care...
Latest Hightlights
Exploring the narratives and research findings of Haitian immigrant women in the diaspora.
SOCIO-CULTURAL • EMBODIED • NARRATIVE