Irene Brisson’s research explores the intimate construction—physical and conceptual—of domestic environments in Haiti and among the Haitian diaspora through the frame of lakay as a discursive and conditional index of belonging based in the relationships between people, place, and memory.

Irene Brisson is a scholar of built environments committed to centering historically marginalized narratives of building culture and designers in Haiti and the Afro-Caribbean diasporas of the Americas within a radically expanded field of global architecture. Brisson is completing a book, Kreyòl Architecture: Design in dialogue in Haitian house building, based on extended ethnographic research with architects, bòsmason, NGOs, and residents involved in housebuilding in Leyogàn, Haiti. They co-edited Ground Rules for Humanitarian Design (2015) and have published in Thresholds and the CCA’s On Migration series.

Brisson’s research has been supported by the US Department of Education Fulbright-Hays program, the Institute for the Humanities and the Rackham Graduate School at the University of Michigan, and a Carter Manny Dissertation Writing Award from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. They are an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Louisiana State University.