“Decolonizing Sociology: State-Building and Knowledge Production in the Maghreb,” studies how intellectuals in North Africa appropriated and transformed the discipline of sociology after independence. These sociologists sought to craft new models to understand culture, human behavior, and the organization of society. Yet they were forced to reckon with the history of their discipline, which had been developed to face the challenges of 19th century Europe. My research asks a number of pressing questions: First, how did thinkers in Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria grapple with the need to reformulate theoretical concepts first developed in Europe? Second, how did the different colonial legacies in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia account for the divergent directions taken by intellectuals?  And third, how did Maghrebi sociologists help consolidate a sense of national identity in the backdrop of ambitious state-building projects across the region?