I am a multi-award-winning historian who has published in prestigious outlets such as The Journal of North African Studies, The International Journal of Middle East Studies, and Middle East Critique. My first book, Humor and Power in Algeria, was published in Indiana University Press’s Series in the Public Cultures of the Middle East and North Africa in 2023. It won the 2024 Carolina’s Excellence in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies Book Award and has been favorably reviewed in several outlets. This work reveals how Algerians have harnessed humor to express competing visions for unity in a divided colonial society, to channel and process emotions surrounding a brutal war of decolonization and the forging of a new nation, and to demonstrate resilience in the face of a terrifying civil conflict.

My next book is tentatively titled Icons and Agents of Liberty: Algerian Women and Global South-South Feminist Solidarity in the Fight for Decolonization, 1954 to 1990. Applying theories of feminism, decolonization, and discourse analysis to a rich transnational collection of texts and oral histories, Icons and Agents shows the importance of Algerian women as agents of decolonization during and after their nation’s successful anticolonial Revolution. Within and beyond state feminist structures, from Havana to Beijing, these women mobilized their revolutionary legacy to assist other liberation struggles across the globe and on the international stage. Communities in the decolonized/decolonizing world—especially Latin American, Asian, African, and Middle Eastern women—also supported and lived the Algerian Revolution as a galvanizing moment. Icons and Agents retraces how “Third World” feminists crafted new sinews of solidarity beyond First and Second World frameworks to advance the global end of empire.