Maël Lavenaire is a historian who specializes in a new perspective on Caribbean social history based on a comparative analysis between former British and French colonies. His study enlightens the legacies of colonial slavery and its long-term incidences on the economic and social structures as well as the structuring of racial inequalities that characterize this region from the abolition of slavery to the present time. His current research project focuses on a newly comparative analysis including Jamaica, Guadeloupe, and Martinique from the mid-19th century to the end of the 20th century. Prior to this role, he taught for several years at the Université des Antilles in the French Caribbean. His Ph.D. has been a major contribution to the understanding of a paradoxical social change emerging in the post-World War II era in the French Antilles at the time of decolonization, which maintained a purely colonial stratification inherited from colonial slavery, going hand in hand with the reconversion of economic activities and a very high degree of structural unemployment characterizing the new face of these plantation societies.