#MECAM Series
The #MECAM space on the TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research of the Forum Transregionale Studien, curated in cooperation with the Max Weber Stiftung – Deutsche Geisteswissenschaftliche Institute im Ausland, is a permanent outlet for MECAM’s science communication. It features contributions (essays, articles, interviews, conversations, event announcements and reports, book reviews) related to MECAM’s guiding theme, as well as to its five IRFs and academic activities.
Elizabeth Bishop is Associate Professor of History at Texas State University-San Marcos. Her research interests include the modern Arab world, media, and material history. In this conversation, Dianna Abbani discusses the article “Arabs at the 6th World Festival of Youth and Students: UGEMA in the USSR, 1957” with her.
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Mourad Ouchichi est docteur en science politique, Diplômé de l’IEP de Lyon II. Actuellement enseignant chercheur à l’université de Béjaiai. Ses recherches s’articulent autour de la problématique de la Rente, la nature des institutions en lien avec le développement des pays extractives. Son axe privilégié est les études comparatives entre l’Algérie est les pays extractivistes de l’Amérique Latine.
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Publié le 4 Mars 2024
Alessia Carnevale holds a PhD in Civilizations of Asia and Africa from Sapienza University of Rome. Her doctoral thesis deals with Tunisian counter-culture and the ‘committed song’ of the 1970s-1980s. She previously graduated in Comparative Literatures and Cultures from the University of Naples l’Orientale. Her research explores the relations between culture and politics, issues of collective memories and (counter)narratives, and grassroots/top-down interventions in the cultural field.
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Asma Helali est Maitre de conférences en islamologie à l’Université de Lille (France), elle a occupé plusieurs postes de recherche dans le monde arabe ainsi qu’en Europe et au Royaume-Uni. Ses recherches portent sur la transmission des textes religieux en Islam premier. Au sein de MECAM, le projet d’Asma Helali porte sur le dévoilement des croyances et identités religieuses: l’enseignement des textes religieux dans le milieu de Qayrawan au 11ème siècle. A. Helali est auteur de The Sanaa Palimpsest: The Transmission of the Qur’an in the First Centuries AH (Oxford University Press, 2017) et co-auteur avec Stephen R. Burge, de, The Making of Religious Texts in Islam: The Fragment and the Whole (Gerlach, 2019).
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Joshua Rigg holds a PhD in Politics and International Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. His research interests include socio-political transformations in the Middle East and North Africa, the politics of extractivism, everyday political thinking, and the afterlives of colonial and post-colonial North Africa. He has previously written on everyday understandings of justice in post-overthrow Tunisia, extractivism and marginalization in Tunisia’s south, and the circulation of revolutionary political thinking in the Mediterranean space.
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In this article, Steffen Wippel presents his newest book (De Gruyter, 2023) on communication strategies and image building employed by governments and corporations across the MENA region.
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Mohamed Amara received his master’s degree in economic modeling from the Higher Institute of Management of Tunis in 2004, before undertaking a PhD in Geography at the University of Paris I and a PhD in management (quantitative Methods) at the University of Tunis in 2010. His research focuses on development economics, regional sciences, labor market, youth and gender in MENA region, and applied micro-econometrics. He has published in a range of journals on a variety of topics such as the Annals of Regional Science, Social Indicators Research, Annals of Economic and Statistics, Growth & Change, Papers in regional science, Middle East development Journal, and Letters in Spatial and Resource Sciences.
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Hartmut Elsenhans’s new book “Capitalism and Rent: A Destructive Relationship” (2023) is a summary of his central argument on capitalism: Capitalism, profit and development depend on rising mass incomes and hence on the empowerment of the labouring masses. The powerful always fight against such empowerment, with increasing success because of globalisation of rent. A conversation with Rachid Ouaissa.
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Julius Dihstelhoff and Tomaz Amorim, 28
Global academic collaboration is a dynamic field, where it is important to deal with inequalities and build connections between institutions from different regions. Recent discussions have shed light on these pivotal issues. Julius Dihstelhoff, Academic Coordinator of the Merian Centre for Advanced Studies in the Maghreb (MECAM) in Tunis/Tunisia, and Tomaz Amorim, Academic Coordinator of the Maria Sibylla Merian Centre Conviviality-Inequality in Latin America (MECILA), shared their reflections on these issues.
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Vanessa Barisch, Published on
By Vanessa Barisch. What started out as an underground festival of cultural resistance against Tunisia’s former political regime, has evolved over 15 years into a globally prestigious cultural event in the heart of the historical centre of the country’s capital: The Dream City Festival.
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Cyrine Kortas is a Tunisian postdoctoral fellow at MECAM centre, majored in English literature. She is an associate professor at the Higher Institute of Languages, Gabes, Tunisia and a researcher at the LAD lab unit at the faculty of arts and humanities Sfax. Her research interests include: comparative literature, feminist and gender studies, as well as teaching literature in EFL classrooms.
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By Joshua E. Rigg. In Al-Janub Ya Kibdiyy (The South, My Dear Son; lit. The South, My Liver), Mohamed Bettaieb (b. 1985), offers an alternative vision. His work deals with everyday life in Tunisia’s south – its economy, culture, history and myth. Collected and edited by the journalist and North African correspondent, Bassam Bounenni, the book brings together a selection of Bettaieb’s satirical morality tales, comments on current events, personal memoir and confessions, and literary and philosophical discussions. A review.
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Nessim Znaien is a Junior Professor at the University of Marburg, holding the (Post)colonial Maghreb Chair since April 2022. After studying history in Lyon and Paris, he defended a doctoral thesis at the University of Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne in September 2017, entitled “Les raisins de la domination. Histoire sociale de l’alcool dans la Tunisie du Protectorat (1881-1956)”. To complete this thesis, Nessim Znaien was awarded a grant from the Institut de Recherche sur le Maghreb Contemporain (IRMC), a French research institute based in Tunis (2014-2017). He was also a lecturer at the University of Aix-Marseille (2017-2020). Nessim Znaien is one of the editors of the journal l’Année du Maghreb. He conducts research on the history of material culture in the colonial and post-colonial Maghreb, in particular on the history of food and cereals.
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This interview with Professor Khaled Kchir, aims to unveil the significance of Ibn Khaldûn, whose influence, though profound, is often underestimated today. Professor Kchir sheds light on Ibn Khaldûn’s substantial impact in the past, his current importance, and his relevance as a model for the future.
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By Imen Louati and Julius Dihstelhoff. This anthology aims to generate a new approach to address regional studies in the Maghreb. Indeed, capturing the Maghreb’s heterogeneity and its dynamic is central for reflecting on recent transformations, not only in the Maghreb but in the Arab world generally, particularly in relation to the Arab uprisings of 2010–11.
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