Sarra ZAÏED (eng)

Personal page : Sarra ZAÏED

Trained in History (Paris-Cité University) and in Arabic (Bourguiba Institute of Tunis), my research focuses on the colonial and post-colonial history of North Africa. I am interested in the political history of the Maghrib, always ensuring that this history is rooted in a long-term perspective. I studied the Maghrib and its societies in its transnational circulations, whether linked to Europe and colonial France, or to other countries of the Arab world.
My doctoral and post-doctoral research focuses on minorities, a category considered in its political sense, i.e. a category that experiences a process of undermining set in motion by a dominant group. I first studied Tunisian nationalists during the colonial period (Ph.D.). My current research project analyses the lives of uneducated women in the countryside of the North African regions, a category doubly minoritized by its gender and its geographical roots.
Since 2023, I’m a postdoctoral fellow at the MWI with Elisabeth Becker, working on her project “Invisible architects : Jews, Muslims and the making of Europe” (Freigeist fellowship). I’m interested in the history of France during the colonial period. I’m focused on religious minorities (Jews and Muslims) and will explore the history of France through the lens of these minorities.

Since September 2023 : Postdoctoral Fellow at the Max Weber Institute for Sociology under the Freigeist Project held by Elisabeth Becker.
2022- 2023: Temporary Teaching Fellow (A.T.E.R in French) in the history of the Middle-East and North Africa at INaLCO (Oriental Studies Institute of Paris).
2021-2022: Postdoctoral Fellow at EHESS (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris).
Title of the research proposal : « Language of women through improvised lyrical songs (ġnaʾ bil ṣūt). Transmission of norms in southern Tunisia, from the independence to the Arab spring (1950-2010) »
From 2017 to 2021 : Lecturer in the History of the Middle-East and North Africa at INaLCO (Oriental Studies Institute, Paris).
2019-2020 : Lecturer in the in the history of the Middle-East and North Africa at Sciences Po Paris.

« Les Jeunes Tunisiens, une contre-expérience de la minoration ? Politisation des langues dans la presse francophone en Tunisie coloniale (1907-1912) » [Young Tunisians, a counter- experiment to minoritisation ? Politicisation of language in the French-speaking press in colonial Tunisia (1907-1912)] , L’Année du Maghreb[En ligne], 27 | 2022, mis en ligne le 30 juin 2022. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/anneemaghreb/10709 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/anneemaghreb.10709
« Les langues face à l’Autre en contexte colonial : identité et pratiques langagières en Tunisie » [Languages facing the Other in colonial context : identity and linguistic practices in Tunisia], Les représentations de l’Autre, sous la direction de Seydi Diamil Niane, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2017

30th of June 2022, workshop on families in North Africa. Organized with Mériam Cheikh, anthropologist (INaLCO). http://cetobac.ehess.fr/index.php?3019
June 2018, workshop with PhD students working on the MENA region and held in Aix-en-Provence. https://halqa.hypotheses.org/5005
June 2017, workshop with PhD students working on the MENA region and held in Paris. https://halqa.hypotheses.org/5001