Cécile Accilien, Associate Professor of African & African-American Studies and Director of the Institute of Haitian Studies, is the language coordinator for Haitian Creole and spent a year as a Fulbright Lecturer and Researcher at the Université de Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso. Her research, investigating French-speaking Caribbean and African communities, takes an interdisciplinary approach to women and gender studies, as well as cultural studies.