Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Victoria, Canada. Her work as a social and cultural anthropologist concentrates on the production and consumption of music in Cuba. Alexandrine has conducted fieldwork amongst beatmakers and producers of hip-hop and reggaetón in Santiago de Cuba, and has explored the political, ideological and economic dynamics between these actors and the Cuban music industries. More recently, and as part of the MusDig research project, she has undertaken research in Havana, investigating issues of digital music circulation, production, consumption and intellectual property rights. She has also conducted fieldwork amongst beatmakers and consumers of Piu Piu - a post hip-hop wave that is currently booming in Montreal, Canada.
In 2010, Alexandrine directed the film Golden Scars with funding from the National Film Board of Canada. The film offers an exclusive look into the unique stories of two young rappers born in Santiago de Cuba. Golden Scars was selected at more than fifteen international film festivals including the International Ethnographic Film Festival of the Royal Anthropological Institute (London), theNew York International Latino Film Festival and the Taiwan International Ethnographic Film Festival. She is co-author with Dr. Jan Fairley of the article 'Recording the Revolution: 50 Years of Music Studios in Revolutionary Cuba', published in The Art of Record Production (2012), edited by Simon Frith and Simon Zagorski-Thomas. Her research has been published in The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, Anthropologica and Ethnologies. As a visual anthropologist, Alexandrine grounds her approach in an exploration of the 'ethnography of image and sound production', which aims to think creatively about anthropology while experimenting with the audio-visual medium.
