Cécile Chantraine Braillon

Cécile Chantraine Braillon has been a professor of Hispanic studies at La Rochelle Université since 2018. Her research focuses on Hispano-American theatre and performing arts, as well as on the digitisation and computerisation of research on live performance (digital humanities). She holds a PhD in Hispanic studies from the University of Lille Nord de France (2007) and an accreditation to supervise research (HDR), obtained in 2017. Her work deals with contemporary and ultra-contemporary Hispano-American theatre, particularly from the Río de la Plata region (Uruguay and Argentina), as well as its development and dissemination in France. Her analyses are oriented towards theatre studies, combining multiple critical approaches derived from her initial training (philological and semiological), her doctoral studies (genetic and archival methods), and her postdoctoral research (philosophy of theatre and performance studies). Her doctoral research led to the digital enhancement of Uruguayan theatre archives as part of the ANR CHispa project (2014–2017), through which she also trained in digital humanities, particularly in the computerisation of performing arts research. Since then, she has directed several complementary research programmes in this field, including the regional project VISUAL STAGING (Northern France, 2016–2023) and, subsequently, the research programme ESNA (École du Spectateur de Nouvelle-Aquitaine, 2021–2024). The latter resulted in the development of the e-spect@tor application, a digital tool dedicated to the annotation and analysis of live performance recordings (https://especellu.huma-num.fr). She currently heads the LabCom THEATRALAB (ANR programme, 2026–2030), as well as the PERFORMA project, funded by the Institut des Amériques, which aims to create a multilingual digital dictionary for the performing arts. In addition, she co-leads the THEATRALIA Working Group, recognised by DARIAH-ERIC, whose research focuses on the computerisation of performing arts research. Finally, she is an active member of the HN CANEVAS consortium, supported by IR Huma-Num and dedicated to creating a national digital infrastructure for audiovisual corpora in the humanities and social sciences. Within this framework, she participates in the OSCARS Cluster, which brings together European research infrastructures and aims to promote and share good practices in video-based research.

CV updated on 2026-09-15.