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Seminar Session: April 29, 2021: Hedwig Richter

“Historicizing Democracy. Inclusion and equality in the long 19th century”

April 29, 2021. 15h00-17h00 (Berlin Time). Registration: https://forms.gle/A8AJDvdaQyUiG5qD8

Abstract: 

When we look at the history of democracy, aspects of democracy come into view that are often overlooked. These include, for example, the interests of elites in democracy or the ambivalent relationship between revolutions and democratization processes.​ An important point concerns the history of democracy. It is interesting that most European countries do not tell their history as a history of democracy until the second half of the 20th century. Nevertheless, there was already a decisive change around 1900: with mass politicization, it became more and more self-evident that political legitimacy had to be based somehow on the “masses” respectively on the “people”.

Hedwig Richter is Professor for Modern History at the Bundeswehr University Munich since 2020. Before that, she held positions at the Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung, at Greifswald University and Bielefeld University.  Her research focuses on European history, history of the United States, democracy, elections, gender, migration, and the history of religion. She studied history, German literature and philosophy at Heidelberg University, Queen’s University (Belfast) and the Freie Universität of Berlin. She is a regular columnist for newspapers like the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the taz, die ZEIT and the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Among her publications: Aufbruch in die Moderne Reform und Massenpolitisierung im Kaiserreich [The Emergence of Modern Reform and Mass Politicisation in the German Empire] (Suhrkamp, 2021); Frauenwahlrecht : Demokratisierung der Demokratie in Deutschland und Europa (with Kerstin Wolff) (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung 2019); Kultur und Praxis der Wahlen : Eine Geschichte der modernen Demokratie [The culture and practice of elections : a history of modern democracy] (ed. with Hubertus Buchstein) (Springer, 2017); Moderne Wahlen : eine Geschichte der Demokratie in Preussen und den USA im 19. Jahrhundert [Modern Elections : a History of Democracy in Prussia and the USA in the 19th century] (Hamburger Edition, 2017). In English: “Transnational Reform and Democracy: Election reforms in New-York City and Berlin around 1900“, The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 2016, 15-2, p.149-175.

In 2020, she published Demokratie. Eine deutsche Affäre (C.H. Beck).

Next session: May 6, 2021: Selda Tuncer (Yüzüncü Yıl University, Van) “Women and Public Space in Turkey. A Gendered History of Modernity, Urban Experience and Everyday Participation”

Full 2020-2021 programme of the HISDEMAB seminar

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Habib Kazdaghli: Exhibition and Conference in Tunis

Hisdemab Senior member Prof. Dr. Habib Kazdaghli just published an article about the conference and exhibition on the Centenary of the Communist movement in Tunisia (1921-2021) that he organized at the Cinémathèque de Tunis.

More info: Centenaire du mouvement communiste en Tunisie, Leaders, 25.3.2021

Poster of the conference

From the article:

“Since Tuesday 23 March and throughout this week (23-26 March 2021), a great event is taking place at the beautiful Cité de la Culture in Tunis (Avenue Mohamad V) and more particularly at the Cinemathèque under the sign of the history, memory and heritage of a century of struggles for equality, freedom and dignity. A history of the Tunisian left-wing movements in the diversity of their contributions and the multitude of their sacrifices. This is a scientific initiative proposed by the Laboratoire du Patrimoine, a research unit founded 22 years ago at the Faculty of Letters, Arts and Humanities of Manouba University in Tunis. The initiative is done in close cooperation with the Office of Academic Cooperation of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and has found support and encouragement from several associations of civil society: Association Perspectives-Amel Tounisi, Hassen Saadaoui Foundation for Democracy, Lam Cheml Association, Mountada Ettajdid, Ahmed Tlili Foundation etc…

In the space overlooking the main entrance hall, the exhibition retraces this century of workers’ and political struggles that began in an organised manner in March 1921 with the birth of the first communist organisation, just a few months after the birth of the Destourian party in 1920. Photos and archival documents from the early days are on display, some of them first-hand, shown for the first time to the general public. Alongside the first Manifesto of Communism in Tunisia, (La Brochure Rouge), the first popular poems praising anti-colonial communism and the social liberation of workers, poems by Abderrahmen el-Kéfi in their original edition.

The early figures of communism were plural, multiracial and international. But the first local militants are visible through the figure of Mokhtar Ayari, both a trade unionist and a journalist, who was the first ally of Mohamed Ali Hammi during his founding trade union experience of Tunisian trade unionism. Like him, he was exiled for a long time in Alexandria after the famous colonial trial against the leadership of the CGTT in 1925 and only returned to Tunisia after Independence, .

The history of the Tunisian Communist Party traces the epic moment of the anti-colonial struggle and the resistance of the Tunisian people and its workers against social and national oppression. What emerges from the exhibition: singular itineraries, forms of new sociability, barriers and walls that are breaking down between communities and ethnic and social groups: for the first time in this country, Muslim and Jewish Tunisians are organising and fraternising in the same political and trade union space with French, Italians and Maltese to build a single family with common ideals and the same motto: to liberate people wherever they are in the name of a common social and philosophical ideal. A true universal and romantic epic. At times, Tunisia became a place of exile, refuge and combat for Italian anti-fascists, Spanish Republicans and French Gaullists.

This history is also one of successive resistances and endurances. Alongside the Destourians, the communists were also seen filling prisons and places of exile, condemned and hunted down. Throughout its existence during the colonial period, the Tunisian communist party lived in hiding, banned and rarely tolerated during the Popular Front or the post-war period.

But this story continues after Independence under different conditions. Faced with the national state being built under the hegemonic leadership of a Destourian party that emerged victorious under the direction of a haloed and charismatic leader: Habib Bourguiba. The militants of the communist party, followed by the young people of the “new left”, wanted to make their contribution to the construction of the new Tunisia, both through criticism and critical support, and through radical opposition, which cost them years of imprisonment and banishment in their own country. Despite attempts to adapt to the new national context, it was a real crossing of the desert that began for the communists following the banning of their party in January 1963. It was also the birth, alongside and often in competition with the Tunisian communist party, of new movements from the new university elite: the “Perspectives” movement and the famous first political trials of the left in 1968. Then came the era of pluralism of the left and its successive mutations and evolutions. The communist ideal is reformulated by more than one group: El-Amel Attounsi, Watad, POCT, from trial to trial and from resistance to resistance tells the story of student protest in its own way.

The meeting which is currently taking place (23-26 March), is divided into panels led by talented journalists (Amel Chahed, Selma Jlassi, Adel Kadri, Hassen Ayadi, Mourad Zghidi, Leila Bourogaa, Soufiane ben Hmida etc.). It approaches with serenity and method under the sign of appeasement and historical distancing, the major themes of this past and its memory, from the birth to the present initiatve of historical assessment of one century of communism with historians of more than one generation and multiple actors.
The cinemathèque, partner of the event, has reserved for the public a series of emblematic Tunisian and international films, including “Terre tunisienne”, “L’homme qui escalada la montagne” (The man who climbed the mountain), “Les Sabots en or” (The golden clogs) by Nouri Bouzid, the famous “Sacco et Vanzetti” (Sacco and Vanzetti) and “Aouled Lenine” [The Children of Lenin] by Nadia El Fani, etc. ….

From an object of political struggle, marked by decades of passions, divergences and controversies on university campuses, the history of Tunisian communism (in the multiplicity of its contributions) is invited, by the Laboratoire du Patrimoine, on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of the first communist nucleus, to become, also, a field of historical research, an object of reflexion, of comprehension of the meanderings of the past. A theme of high cultural and memorial value, which will continue to be discussed through meetings already planned in several regions until the end of 2021: Gabes, April 10, Siliana, May 21, Bizerte, July 19, Sousse, October 2021, will mark the anchoring of Tunisia in modernity and its attachment to universal thought”.

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An International and Collaborative Research Programme

Seminar Session: March 25, 2021: Amr Elshobaki

Contemporary Visions of Historical Deliberative processes in Egypt

March 25, 2021. 15h00-17h00 (Berlin Time). Registration: https://forms.gle/A8AJDvdaQyUiG5qD8

This lecture will analyse the relationship between contemporary debates on deliberative processes in Egypt and perceptions of the various historical layers of constitutional history. This perspective will be the base for reflections on the historicity and nature of processes of political deliberation in Egypt. Amr Elshobaki will then focus on the question of the role of the Egyptian Parliament in relation to the concept and practice of democracy, as well as on matters of deliberation and decision-making following the events of 2011. He will also reflect on such issues through his own experience as a Member of Parliament involved in constitutional reform in Egypt and as a columnist involved in debates on political action.

Amr Elshobaki presently serves as an expert with the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo. He holds a Bachelor in political sciences from Cairo University (1984), a Master’s degree from Institut d’études politiques d’Aix-en-Provence (1993) and a PhD in comparative political studies from Université Paris 1-Sorbonne (2001). He was elected in 2012 as a member (Independent) of the Egyptian Parliament and also served as a member of the 2013 Egyptian Constitution Committee. He is since 2006 a columnist for the Egyptian newspaper Almasry Alyom.

Among his publications: إسلاميون وديمقراطيون : إشكاليات بناء تيار إسلامي ديمقراطي [Islamists and Democrats: The problems of building a democratic Islamic movement] Cairo, Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, 2004; The crisis of Egyptian political parties: the experience of the Al-Amal party, Cairo, Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, 2005; The crisis of the Muslims brotherhood, Cairo, Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, 2008; Les frères Musulmans des origines à nos jours, Paris, Khartala, 2009; The Arab Democratic Wave (with Alvaro de Vasconcelos), Paris, ISS, 2011; Crisis of political parties in Egypt Arab Strategic Report Al – Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, 2018; A look on local journalism in the Arab region: Do we begin from here? (ed.), Arab Forum For Alternatives and Swedish Institute Alexandria, 2019.

Next session: April 29, 2021: Hedwig Richter (Universität der Bundeswehr, München) “Historicizing Democracy”

Full 2020-2021 programme of the HISDEMAB seminar

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Seminar Session: March 11, 2021:Abdul-Hameed Al-Kayyali

The Question of Power in Classical Islam: Searching for the roots of deliberative processes

In the Islamic tradition, after the death of the prophet Muhammad in 632 C.E., a series of successors called khulafâ’ or caliphs, claimed political authority over the Muslim community. The emergence of the institution of the Caliphate during this formative period of Islam (sadr al-Islâm) saw the convergence of elements of various origins, the interaction of which had a strong influence on the redefinition of questions of power, legitimacy and deliberation. This lecture, on the basis of a reading of a series of manuscripts and treaties, by al-Tabari (839-923 C.E), al-Balathuri (d. in 892 C.E.), al-Masoudi (d. in 956 C.E.) and others, will analyse the contrast between narrations of elections and selection processes during the period described as the Rashidun and the consolidation of processes of hereditary nature under the Umayyad and then the Abbasid dynasties. In classical Islam, one of the central moments of discussion of this dimension is that of the writing of al-Ahkam al-Sultaniyyah by Al-Mawardi (972-1058 CE), a manuscript whose influence will also be examined in the lecture as for deliberation processes. In relation with reflections on the articulation of various layers of historicity, the lecture will also discuss the complex ramifications in the contemporary Arab and Muslim worlds of the question of power in Islam as seen from this perspective. It will examine how this historical analysis allows one to reflect on contemporary debates on democracy, forms of legitimation and mobilization in relation with the intellectual and political contexts of post-colonialism, Eurocentrism as well as of essentialist and contextualist views. 

Abdul-Hameed Al-Kayyali is a Researcher in the Department of Medieval and Modern Arabic Studies- DEAMM at Institut Français du Proche-Orient (Ifpo) in Amman. He also serves as Pedagogical Coordinator of Arabic Courses at Ifpo- Amman and Beirut. Al-Kayyali holds a Ph.D. degree from the Institute for Research and Studies on the Arab and Islamic Worlds (IREMAM) at the University of Aix-Marseille in France. Throughout his research career, he focused on the areas of early Islamic history, the cultural history of Islam and the contemporary history and politics of the Middle East. Among his publications: “Ben-Yehuda in his Ottoman Milieu: Jerusalem’s Public Sphere as Reflected in the Hebrew Newspaper Ha-Tsevi, 1884–1915” (with Hassan Ahmad Hassan)(in Ordinary Jerusalem 1840–1940. Opening New Archives, Revisiting a Global City, Edited by Angelos Dalachanis and Vincent Lemire)

Next session: March 25, 2021: Amr Elshobaki (Alahram Center for Political & Strategic studies, Cairo) “Contemporary Visions of Historical Deliberative processes in Egypt”.

Full 2020-2021 programme of the HISDEMAB seminar

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Seminar Session: February 18, 2021: Tariq Tell

Debating Representation and Democracy in Jordan in the 1950s: the Rise and Fall of the Jordanian National Movement

The first decade of King Hussein’s (1935-1999) long reign (1952-1999) has long been seen as a time of instability and upheaval, when the Hashemite regime tottered and even Jordan’s survival as an independent state was in the balance. Yet the era is also remembered by left leaning Jordanians as a time of democratic hope and radical possibility, when the foundations of a national developmental state were laid, and a motley coalition of Communists, Pan-Arabists and Free Officers coalesced into a mass based ‘Jordanian National Movement’ (JNM). Radicalized by the social dislocation that followed the Palestinian Nakba and the toll of Israel’s ‘Border Wars,’ the JNM gained control of a radical nationalist street that cajoled the youthful King into abandoning plans to join the Baghdad Pact. Inspired by Nasser’s example, the military wing of the movement then enforced the ‘nationalization’ of the Arab Legion and the expulsion of the British officers who were in operational control of the Jordan’s defense. By foisting freely contested elections on Hussein in 1956, the JNM and the mass movement it orchestrated brought to power the left leaning, if also short lived government of Sulayman al-Nabulsi (October 1956-April 1957). To date the only Jordanian cabinet imposed by parliament rather than the Palace, the Nabulsi government abrogated the Anglo-Jordanian Treaty and brought to an end a colonial relationship with Great Britain that stretched back to the foundation of modern Jordan in 1921.

This talk will re-examine the social origins of JNM, taking leave of accounts that trace its rise to the entry of embittered, activist Palestinians into Jordanian politics after the unification of Trans-Jordan with the ‘West Bank’ in the wake of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. It goes on to propose a different ‘historicity’ of the JNM through engagement with the social history of Jordan as well as the writings of a Jordanian nationalist writer, the late Nahidh Hattar. On this view, the genealogy of the JNM stretches back to the five Jordanian National Congresses that defined Jordan’s national political field in the first decade of Mandatory rule. And despite well-known differences over Jordan’s entry into the Baghdad Pact, it is possible to chart important continuities between significant factions of the JNM and the reformist governments of Hazza‘ al-Majali and Wasfi al-Tall that brought to an end the bitter repression imposed by Hussein with US support after martial law was imposed and the JNM quashed in 1957-1958.

Tariq Tell is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration of the American University of Beirut, where his teaching focuses on Political Development and Social Change as well as on the Historical Political Economy of the Global South. He has degrees from St. Antony’s College (Oxford University), the Institute of Development Studies (University of Sussex) and the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has previously taught Development Studies at the American University in Cairo and the University of Manchester (UK). He has also held research posts at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, and in Amman at the Centre d’Etudes et de Recherche sur le Moyen Orient Contemporain (CERMOC) and the Royal Scientific Society.

Tell has co-edited (with E. Rogan) Village, Steppe and State: The Social Origins of Modern Jordan  (I.B. Tauris, 1994) and edited The Resilience of Hashemite Rule: Politics and the State in Jordan before 1967 (Cahier du Cermoc, 2001).  His book, The Social Origins of Middle Eastern Monarchy: The Moral Economy of Hashemite Rule in Jordan was published by Palgrave in 2013.  He is currently working on a Historical Dictionary of Jordan. His research interests also include the political economy of Arab monarchies, the history and politics of the military in Jordan, the historical political ecology of the Bedouin in the Fertile Crescent and the historical relationship between food sovereignty, empire and moral economy in the modern Middle East.

Tell has been active on the Jordanian left since 1978. He was a member of the Jordanian Union of Democratic Youth (Ittihad al-Shabab al-Dimuqrati al-Urduni) and was elected to its governing council in 1991. He was a founding director of al-Mithaq Newspaper from 1996-1998 and served as the spokesman of the Progressive Jordanian Tendency (al-Tayar al-Taqaddumi al-Urduni) in the autumn and winter of 2011. He became a member of the central committee of the Communist Union (Ittihad al-Shuyu‘iyyun) in Amman in 2015.

Next session: March 11, 2021: Abdul-Hameed Al-Kayyali (Institut français du Proche-Orient, Amman) “The question of Power in Medieval Islam: Searching for the Roots of Deliberative processes”

Full 2020-2021 programme of the HISDEMAB seminar

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Seminar Session: January 28, 2021: Hedayat Heikal

“Constitutionalism in the Middle East and the Question of Democracy: In Search of a Time Zero”

January 28, 2021. 15h00-17h00 (Berlin Time). Registration: https://forms.gle/A8AJDvdaQyUiG5qD8

Abstract:

Modern constitutionalism defines itself as the “essence” of democracy.  Without rights protections, and especially judicial enforcement of these protections, democracy is at best incomplete. At worst a sham.  But some constitutional courts have gone further.  Building in part on the entrenched logic of the 1949 German Basic Law, courts in Hungary, India, Colombia, and Turkey among other examples have fashioned doctrines of basic structure or articulated visions of constitutional identity that legislatures are estopped from modifying.  While the concepts of basic structure and constitutional identity are often anchored in certain fundamental rights or a distinctive religious heritage, this talk builds on work from Middle Eastern courts to explore a more expansive definition of constitutional identity.

Hedayat Heikal’s primary research interests are in comparative law, constitutional law and theory, and the rise of the modern administrative state. Dr. Heikal holds both a Doctor of Law (J.D.) magna cum laude and a Doctorate of Juridical Science (S.J.D.) from Harvard Law School where she was a recipient of the Sears Prize and the Addison Brown Writing Prize. Her S.J.D. dissertation focused on the rise and fall of judicial activism on national identity questions in the Middle East. During her studies, she served as a Research Scholar in Law and the inaugural Islamic Law and Civilization Research Fellow at Yale Law School for two academic years, a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the American University in Cairo, as well as a Graduate Program Fellow at Harvard Law School. Between 2009 and 2013, she practiced as a litigation and arbitration attorney at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP in New York representing clients on a wide array of disputes and regulatory matters. Prior to law school, she graduated from the American University in Cairo summa cum laude with a degree in Electronics Engineering and Mathematics.

Next session: February 18, 2021: Tariq Tell (American University of Beirut) “Debating Representation and Democracy in early-Independent Jordan”

Full 2020-2021 programme of the HISDEMAB seminar

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Habib Kazdaghli: Interview on ExpressFM

Prof. Dr. Habib Kazdaghli, Senior Member of the HISDEMAB research team, gave an interview this week on ExpressFM Tunis on the theme of democracy and pluralism on the sad occasion of the death of Gilbert Naccache (1939-2020). Gilbert Naccache belonged to one of the oldest Tunisian families. He was trained as an Agronomist Engineer. He has been working for the Tunisian Ministry of Agriculture during the first decade of Independence. He was also a writer and a political leftist activist (member of the Tunisian Communist Party until 1959 and then of the leftist political movement Perspectives Tunisiennes). He was emprisoned 11 years under Pdt Habib Bourguiba and remained a dissident under Pdt Ben Ali until the 2011 Revolution. Among his publications: Vers la démocratie ?, Tunis, Mots Passants, 2011; Patchwork : textes politiques et théoriques écrits entre 1978 et 2018, Tunis, Chama, 2019, 328 p.; Qu’as-tu fait de ta jeunesse : itinéraire d’un opposant au régime de Bourguiba, 1954-1979 : suivi de récits de prison, Paris, Cerf, 2009,

Habib Kazdaghli’s Interview:

L’interview : حبيب القزدغلي أستاذ تاريخ معاصر . عودة على مسيرة الكاتب والناشط السياسي اليساري التونسي جيلبار نقاش ، وعودة على مبادرة الاتحاد العام التونسي للشغل والمتمثلة في بعث حوار وطني للخروج من الأزمة نظرا لكونه من بين الموقعيين على هذه المبادرة. #Expresso

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An International and Collaborative Research Programme

Seminar Session: December 10, 2020: François Hartog

“Reflections on Historicity, Time and Historical Research”

December 10, 2020. 15h00-17h00 (Berlin Time). Registration: https://forms.gle/A8AJDvdaQyUiG5qD8

Abstract:

In his presentation, François Hartog will examine five main questions pertaining to the definition and relevance of the notion of historicity. He will first present the notion of historicity itself and discuss its uses in the present context of historical research and intellectual debates. Around a questioning of the uses of the past in contemporary societies, as well as of the complex relationship between past, present and future, he will also illustrate how an attention to regimes of historicity represents a coherent methodological tool for research. In a second part of the presentation, based on the research featured in his new book, Chronos, he will discuss the successive evolutions of Christian conceptions of time and the conditions of emergence of the modern regime of historicity. The third focus of the presentation will be dedicated to theoretical and historiographical questions on the relationship between democracy and historicity. François Hartog will then present reflections on the emergence since the 1970s of new uses of the past in societies and of policies marked by tendencies that he analyses as manifestations of presentism. The final point of the presentation will critically deal with the question of the historicity of democracy beyond the ‘West’ and in general with questionings on the civilisational and cultural values that have been attached to the notion.

François Hartog (Research Professor Emeritus, EHESS, Paris) is a French historian whose early work focused on Ancient Greece and on questions pertaining to historiography. He later oriented his research towards reflections on the notion of temporality. Among his publications: Le Miroir d’Hérodote. Essai sur la représentation de l’autre [The Mirror of Herodotus: The Representation of the Other in the Writing of History](Paris, 1980); Les Usages politiques du passé [Political Uses of the Past](with Jacques Revel, Paris, 2001); Vidal-Naquethistorien en personne, l’homme-mémoire et le moment-mémoire [Vidal-Naquet: historian, memory-man and memory-moment] (Paris, 2007).

On the question of historicity, he published Régimes d’historicité. Présentisme et expériences du temps (Paris, 2002-Augmented edition 2012). An English translation of this book, in which François Hartog proposes reflections on the notion of presentism and on what he analyses as “crucial moments of change in society’s way of relating to the past, the present and future”, was published by Columbia University Press (Regimes of Historicity: Presentism and Experiences of Time (New-York, 2015).

His latest book, Chronos: l’occident aux prises avec le temps [Chronos: How the West is struggling with Time] (Paris, 2020) was published earlier this year.

Next session: January 28, 2021: Hedayat Heikal (Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, Cambridge MA) “Constitutionalism in the Middle East and the question of democracy”

Full 2020-2021 programme of the HISDEMAB seminar

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An International and Collaborative Research Programme

Seminar Session: November 26, 2020: Dalenda Larguèche

“Feminine deliberative practices in Tunis: between intimacy, decision-making processes and the opinion”

November 26, 2020. 15h00-17h00 (Berlin Time). Registration: https://forms.gle/A8AJDvdaQyUiG5qD8

Abstract:

The history of the city of Tunis, in its multiple temporalities, like that of other cities, has been above all a history of men, builders with their gestures and their words. The meanders of history, however, also invite us to pay attention to women who, despite their remoteness and invisibilisation, have always been present and active. They left their mark on the history of the city: they were actors of social change and bearers of capacities for opinion, action and mobilisation. In this lecture, which takes the Ottoman period, then the period of colonisation and finally the period of independence as its temporal framework, Dalenda Larguèche proposes a reflection on women’s practices, which in their diversity have participated in the socio-political management of the city and in the fabrication of opinion. The presentation first analyses the context and nature of the civic action of the Muradite princess Aziza Othmana in the 17th century, including an examination of the public dimension of the private act of habus (waqf). Dalenda Larguèche then devotes her analyses to the modes of public speaking of two feminist pioneers, Manoubia Ouartani and Habiba Menchari, in 1924 and 1929 respectively, and to the contribution of their actions to the consolidation of a sphere of expression of female opinion. In this spirit, the social and political action of the first Tunisian women’s association, born in 1936 in a colonial context, is also studied. Finally, the lecture devotes particular attention to the struggle of feminist activists for a radical change in the unequal relations in society during the segmented period of the independent state, as well as to the contestation of this male domination through specific demands and modes of mobilisation against those who support and structure gender inequalities in society. This attention to the longue durée of women’s expression makes it possible, between personal or intimate gestures and deliberative action of a civic and political nature, within the framework of diversified and evolving practices, to finally consider women not only as markers of history, despite the oblivion that has often struck them in the dominant historiography, but also as actors rooted in time with a strong opinion and a powerful capacity for mobilisation.

Dalenda Largueche is Full Professor of History and Gender Studies at the University of Manouba in Tunis, where she founded the Master on Gender studies in 2015. She has been a member of the Scientific Council of the Universities of Tunis and Manouba, and has led the “Women, Gender, History and Memory” research group at the Heritage Laboratory. From October 2011 to October 2018, she has been General Director of the Tunisian Center for Research, Studies, Documentation and Information on Women (CREDIF).

Interested in questions of women and gender in Islamic societies, Prof. Dalenda Largueche published numerous books and scholarly articles on women and gender issues, among which: Marginales en terre d’Islam ([Marginalized Women in Islamic Lands], Tunis 1992), Histoire des femmes du Maghreb: Culture matérielle et Vie quotidienne, ([Women’s History in North Africa: Material Culture and Everyday Life], Tunis 2000), Femmes en Ville dans le monde méditerranéen: Passé et Présent, (Tunis 2005), Monogamie en Islam: le contrat de marriage kairouanais, (Tunis 2011).

She has been a visiting professor at various international universities.  

Militant of women rights, she has actively participated in the structuration of the Tunisian democratic women movement.  Activist in the civil society, she is working tirelessly to ensure democracy, human rights and women’s capacities and voices in post-revolution Tunisia.

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An International and Collaborative Research Programme

2020-2021 HISDEMAB Seminar

The programme of the 2020-2021 HISDEMAB research seminar has just been published:

https://hisdemab.hypotheses.org/seminarprogramme

For registration, please send an email to HISDEMAB@gmail.com

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