Aurélie Bouvart completed a master’s degree in Art history in 2016 and a master’s degree in African studies in 2018 at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB). In 2024 she obtained her PhD in Contemporary History at the ULB with a thesis on the judicial repression of African women’s crimes in late-colonial Belgian Congo. Based on her thesis’ results, she has notably published an article that draws on Congolese women’s convictions for alcohol trafficking in Kinshasa, uncovering the racial and gendered mechanisms behind the colonial criminalization of African female economic activities.
As a post-doctoral research fellow in the DIGICOLJUST-2 project, she further examines the interactions between colonialism, gender and criminal justice by focusing on the repression of gender-based violence in the former military courts of the Belgian Congo.