Marie Fierens holds a PhD in Information and Communication from the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium. She also received a postgraduated diploma in Conflict and development from Ghent University. She first worked on the question of the memory of genocide against the Tutsi that took place in Rwanda in 1994. Her thesis focused on two other African countries: the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Côte d’Ivoire. By adopting a comparative perspective, she traced the development of the profession of newspaper journalist in both states, from the end of the colonial era until today. She works now as a postdoctoral fellow under the supervision of Dr. Nicole Stremlau. Her postdoctoral project aims at investigating how the expansion of ICTs in the DRC has an impact on the professional identity of the Congolese journalists.