Nora Lafi (Istres, near Marseille, 1965) is a historian (PhD, 1999; Habilitation, 2011) who specializes in the study of the Ottoman empire and of the societies of the Middle East and North Africa. She works as a Senior Research Fellow at Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin. She is chairing the international and collaborative research project HISDEMAB of the Leibniz-Association on the theme of the historicity of democracy in the Arab and Muslim Worlds. She is also Privat Dozentin at the Freie Universität of Berlin (Graduate School Muslim Culture and Societies). She was in 2020 Senior Fellow of the Max Weber Kolleg at Erfurt University (Research Group Religion and Urbanity). She co-chairs with U. Freitag the Cities Compared: Governance, Consultative Mechanisms and Plurality project within the EUME programme (Forum Transregionale Studien). After HISDEMAB (2020-2023), she worked as Senior Research Fellow at MECAM Tunis. She now leads, together with Suaad Al-Ghafal the Ghadames Heritage Project, based at Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin and funded by the Gerda Henkel Stiftung.
Among her publications: Esprit civique et organisation citadine dans l’empire ottoman (Brill, 2019); Une ville du Maghreb entre ancien régime et réformes ottomanes (L’Harmattan, 2002); Municipalités méditerranéennes (ed., K. Schwarz, 2005 [Arabic Translation 2016 by National Center for Translation, Cairo]); Urban Governance Under the Ottomans (ed. with U. Freitag, 2014, Paperback 2017); Understanding the City through its Margins (Co-ed); Urban Violence in the Middle East (ed. with U. Freitag, N. Fuccaro and C. Ghrawi); “The Complex Nature of Urban Boundaries in the Ottoman Empire” (with F. Riedler); “The ‘Arab Spring’ in Global Perspective” (2017); “Mediterranean Cosmopolitanism and its Contemporary Revivals: a Critical Approach” (2013); “Petitions and Accommodating Urban Change in the Ottoman Empire” (2011); “Finding women and gender in the sources: toward a historical anthropology of Ottoman Tripoli” (2018). ‘Al-hadâtha wal-idâra al-hadâriyya fî Misr al-‘uthmâniyya. As’ila wa tafsîrât’ [Modernity and Administration in Ottoman Egypt: Questions and Research Perspectives] in Nasser Ahmed Ibrahim (ed.) Jadal al-mawḍū’īyah wa-al-dhātīyah fī kitābat tārīkh Miṣr : dirāsāt muhdāh ilá al-mu’arrikhah al-kabīrah Nillī Ḥannā, Cairo: al-Hay’ah al-Miṣrīyah al-‘Āmmah lil-Kitāb, 2012, 179p., 263-273; “Urbanity as an Ethic” in Moser and Ege (eds.), Urban Ethics, Routledge 2020; “Longue-Durée Reflections on Anti-Colonial Movements in the Middle-East (1798–today)” in The Routledge Handbook of EU-Middle East Relations, edited by Dimitris Bouris, Daniela Huber and Michelle Pace (Abingdon, Routledge, 2022); Urban Open Spaces; “La globalisation ottomane et ses régimes d’historicité. Une approche par l’urbain” in Un moyen-Orient ordinaire (edited by Thierry Boissière and Yoann Morvan), Marseille, Diacritiques, 2022, p.8-27.; I mercanti veneziani ad Aleppo nel Cinquecento: degli Ottomani come gli altri?, in Venezia e il suo Stato da Mar (Ester Capuzzo and Bruno Crevato-Selvaggi eds., 2019); “Daily Life Spatialities and Temporalities of Religion in Ottoman Tunis“, Archiv für Religionsgeschichte (2023, 25-1, p.309-333).
