Jean Martinely Iata

Jean Martinely Iata is a graduate of the University of Antananarivo, Madagascar, where he earned both his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Plurilingual and Multicultural studies. His research interests focus on interdisciplinary exploration, merging ethnology, sociolinguistics, and literature, which extends the dominating boundaries of conventional academics.

For his Master’s thesis, titled “Bar for Bar – The Dynamics of American and Malagasy battle rap’s poetics”, Martinely deconstructed and established the general science behind the language of African and African American battle rap, by analyzing them through Charles Olson’s postmodern theory of Projective Verse and from a lingo-cultural perspective that outlined, contextualized, and explained the operational mechanisms of their lexical units and features in creating successful, Afro-surrealistic texts.  

Currently, Martinely is a PhD student at VUB, working on the AFROPRESS ERC project under the guidance of Prof. Cedric Van Dijck. His study investigates magazines and journals printed during colonial and post-independence periods in Madagascar.