HRG Fellow

2025-2026 Humanities Research Fellow

Dr. Carlo Handy Charles (he/him) is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and a Faculty Member of Graduate Studies and the Black Scholars Institute at the University of Windsor. He is also a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Sociology at the University of Michigan and a Fellow at the CNRS French Collaborative Institute on Migrations in Paris. Using qualitative mixed methods, his research explores the intersection of international migration, race, sexualities, and socioeconomic inequalities among migrants and nonmigrants in the Americas, the Caribbean, and Europe. His current book project examines how men in Haiti form and sustain queer transnational relationships with Haitian immigrants in the United States, Canada, France, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic, as well as the impacts of such relationships on Haiti. 

Dr. Charles completed a dual PhD in Sociology and Geography under the supervision of leading migration scholars Dr. Vic Satzewich (McMaster University) and Dr. Cédric Audebert (CNRS). His award-winning doctoral research was recognized with the prestigious SSHRC-Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship, Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholarship, France-Canada Research Fund, Outstanding Graduating Sociology Student Award by the Canadian Sociological Association, and the CNRS Foundation Prize for Best PhD Thesis at the Université des Antilles' Laboratoire Caribéen de Sciences Sociales, among others. He held visiting scholar positions at the University of Toronto's Department of Sociology and Concordia University's Digital Intimacy, Gender, and Sexuality Lab. Before joining the University of Windsor, he taught Sociology at McMaster University and French at L'Alliance Française de Toronto and L'Alliance Française de Caracas (Venezuela).

In addition to his peer-reviewed publications and op-eds in news media, Dr. Charles uses creative writing to disseminate knowledge to audiences outside academia through research-based art. In 2022, he co-authored with Alice Carré the play 'Kap O Mond!', which opened in Paris at l'Échangeur Theatre and has been produced in a dozen theatres in France since. Kap O Mond! addresses contemporary Haitian migration issues in France and French humanitarianism in Haiti. In 2022, he drew on his public scholarship to co-develop with Mark Osmond a script for the film documentary 'Pigs to the Slaughter' in which he analyses how race, ethnicity, sexuality, socio-economic status, and online technology intersect to shape the latest crypto-currency romance scams, which have defrauded investors of hundreds of millions of dollars globally. In 2024, he launched his first manga on homosexuality in Haiti.

About the 2025-2026 fellowship lecture

In 2024, the World Bank estimated that international migrants sent $685 billion to support families, kinship networks, and communities worldwide—underscoring the crucial role of cross-border connections in sustaining lives across national borders. Scholars have extensively examined how migrants’ gender, class, race, and country of origin shape their ability to maintain these ties. Yet, research has paid little attention to how sexuality influences the ways queer migrants and nonmigrants form and sustain transnational relationships. My book project addresses this gap by focusing on Haitian queer relationships that span borders. Haitian migrants have long contributed to the economic survival of families and communities through remittances. While they are often perceived as having a positive economic impact on Haiti, some are criticized for engaging in homosexual behaviours, seemingly infringing on ‘traditional’ Haitian family values in a largely conservative ‘Christian’ society. Drawing on eleven months of ethnographic fieldwork and forty-four semi-structured interviews with men who have sex with men in northern Haiti, my research explores how men in Haiti form and sustain intimate relationships with Haitian migrant partners living in Canada, the United States, France, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic. I examine the social, political, and economic meanings associated with these relationships, their role in redistributing resources, and their perceived impact on gender norms and sexual politics in Haiti. By centring sexuality in the study of transnationalism, my research contributes to debates on migration, intimacy, and inequality while offering new insights into how global mobility intersects with local moral economies and the politics of belonging.

---

Past HRG Fellows