Department/College/UnitSocial Sciences Division

TitleAssociate Professor

AffiliationFaculty

Other UCSC Campus AffiliationCenter for the Middle East and North Africa (CMENA)

Primary Office LocationCrown College Admin Building
231

Office HoursMW - 1:45 to 3pm

Mail StopMerrill/Crown Faculty Services

Biography, Education and Training

My research spans the field of Middle Eastern studies, critical security studies, critical race and ethnic studies, and comparative politics, combining an ethnographic approach with a conceptual apparatus inspired by critical theory. I am particularly interested in the effects of protracted and entangled crises (popular uprisings, “war on terror,” refugee crisis, neoliberalization) in North Africa and beyond. My first book, The Suspended Disaster: Governance by Catastrophization in Bouteflika’s Algeria, was published in 2023 with Columbia University Press, expanding on a French edition initially released in 2019. I have also co-edited the volume North Africa and the Making of Europe with Bloomsbury Publishing (2018). I am currently working on two monographs. The first project analyzes on the rise of authoritarian liberalism in France, as a reaction to the formulation of radical antiracist claims. The second studies forms of subversive and revolutionary mobilities beween Europe and North Africa, with a focus on Algeria and Tunisia.

Research Interests

The Maghreb, The Middle East, French Politics, Antiracism, Islamophobia, Nationalism in the Global South, Subversive Mobilities, Late Capitalism, Political Crises, Science-Fiction, Non-American Football.

Selected Publications

Books:

The Suspended Disaster: Governing by Crisis in Bouteflika's Algeria. New York: Columbia University Press, 2023.

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

Selected Articles and Chapters:

“Authoritarian liberalism and the triangulation of the antiracist left in France,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2025.

“Diasporic Democratic Futures: The Algerian Hirak in Tunis, Paris and the Bay Area,” Middle East Critique, 2024.

“Elections and the Bureaucratic Management of Plurality in Algeria," in Cavatorta & Resta (eds), Routledge Handbook on Elections in the Middle East and North Africa. London: Routledge, 2023.

“The Algerian Hirak: the challenges of vulgarisation and the pitfalls of expertise. A book review essay,” The Journal of North African Studies, 2021.

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

“'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, 2019.

“En attendant Bouteflika. Le président et la crise de sens en Algérie,” L'Année du Maghreb, 2014.