Campus Directory

Division Social Sciences Division

Department/College/Unit Politics Department
Legal Studies

Title Assistant Professor

Affiliation Faculty

Areas of Expertise Comparative Politics
Political Theory
Critical Theory
Middle East Studies
Mediterranean Studies

Primary Office Location Crown College Admin Building
231

Mail Stop Merrill/Crown Faculty Services

Biography, Education and Training

Thomas Serres is a specialist of North African and Mediterranean politics and his scholarship focuses on questions of crisis, economic restructuring and authoritarian upgrading. His first book studies the politics of catastrophization in post-civil war Algeria. This forthcoming monograph is entitled Managing the Crisis, Blaming the People: The Suspended Disaster in Bouteflika's Algeria (Gérer la Crise, Blâmer le Peuple: De la Catastrophe Suspendue dans l'Algérie de Bouteflika). He has also co-edited the volume North Africa and the Making of Europe: Governance, Institutions, Culture, which was published by Bloomsbury Academic Press in 2018.

Research Interests

Critical Security Studies, Political Anthropology, Ethnographic Research, North Africa, Mediterranean Politics, Middle Eastern Politics, Authoritarian Upgrading, Nationalism and Militarism in the Global South, Theory of the Crisis, State of Exception, Human Rights & Terrorism.

Selected Publications

Books:

L'Algérie face à la Catastrophe Suspendue: Gérer la crise et blâmer le peuple sous Bouteflika (Algeria and The Suspended Disaster: Managing Crisis and Blaming the People under Bouteflika), Paris: Karthala-IRMC, 2019.

North Africa and the Making of Europe: Governance, Institutions and Culture, co-edited with Muriam H. Davis, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018.

Peer Reviewed Articles:

“After the Apocalypse: Catastrophizing Politics in Post-Civil War Algeria,” Interdisciplinary Political Studies, 5:1, 2019, 55-87.

“'Vous avez mangé le pays!': Revendications socio-économiques et politisation en Algérie (2011-2019)” (“'You have devoured our country!': Socioeconomic demands and politicization in Algeria (2011–2019)”) Esprit, 6, 2019, 49-60.

“Face au non-évènement : Réflexions à partir d'une expérience de terrain à Alger” (“Facing the Non-Event: Reflections based on field-work in Algiers”), Sociétés plurielles, 1, 2017, 1-27.

“Algerian Symbolic Analysts and the Culture of the Masses,” with Tristan Leperlier, Middle East - Topics & Arguments, 7, 2017, 64-74.

“En attendant Bouteflika. Le président et la crise de sens en Algérie” (“Waiting for Bouteflika: The President and the Crisis of Meaning in Algeria”), L'Année du Maghreb, X, 2014, 59-75.

“La ‘jeunesse algérienne’ en lutte. Du rôle politique conflictuel d'une catégorie sociale hétérogène” (“The Struggle of the ‘Algerian Youth’: On the Conflictual Political Role of a Heterogeneous Social Category”) Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée, 134, 2013, 213-230.

“Contestatory Politics in Algeria: Between Postcolonial Legacies and the Arab Spring,” with Muriam H. Davis, Middle East Critique, 22:2, 2013, 99-112.

Articles in Edited Volumes:

“La réforme du marché du travail, entre néolibéralisation et tiers-mondisme” (“Reforming the Job Market, Between Neoliberalization and Third-Worldism”), in Karima Dirèche (eds.), L'Algérie au Présent, Paris: Karthala-IRMC, 2019.

Working Papers:

“The Algerian Counter-Revolution and the Obsolescence of Authoritarian Upgrading,” Georgetown University, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, 2021.

“Understanding Algeria's 2019 Revolutionary Movement,” Brandeis University, Crown Center for Middle East Studies, Middle East Brief, 129, 2019.

“Ordoliberalism beyond Borders: The EU and Algeria's Human Capital,” EUI Working Papers, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, BORDERLANDS Project, 42, 2016.

Courses Poli 118 - Critical Political Thought and Critical Theory
Poli 152 - Middle East Politics
Poli 166 - Politics of Migration
Poli 172 - Liberalism, the State, and the War on Terror