Morocco

Lecturers

Soumaya Belhabib, PhD
Soumaya Belhabib is professor of gender studies at University Ibn Tofail in Kenitra. She is a founding member and vice president of the Association CHAML for Research on the Family and Woman, created in 1998, and a member of the executive scientific research  committee of this association. Since 2003, she has been a member of the Coordination Committee of UNESCO chair on Women and Rights. Professor Behbib has published a papers related to gender politics and has coordinated a number of round tables and conferences on  subjects including violence against women, development from a feminist perspective, the family and citizenship, and more.

Khalid Chegraoui, PhD
Khalid Chegraoui is a full professor of history and political anthropology at the Institute of African Studies, Mohammed V University, Rabat, Morocco, and senior fellow at the Policy Center for the New South, previously known as OCP Policy Center. He began his teaching and research career in 1992 as a research assistant professor at Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdallah University in Fez after earning his first doctorate in African studies from the Mohammed V University in Rabat, focusing on West Sub-Saharan Africa. He also earned a doctorate of state in African studies from the same university in 2002, where he focused on contemporary West Africa. In 2003 he become professor of history and political anthropology at the Institute of African Studies, Mohammed V University, consultant on African and Middle East issue and strategic studies.

He is currently director of Research Group: African Politics, a doctoral supervisor at the Mohammed V University; professor of African history in EGE School of Governance and Economy of Rabat, Polytechnic Mohammed VI University; and director of Africa and Middle East Centre Studies at the AMES Centre.

Driss Maghraoui, PhD
Driss is a professor of history and international relations at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane and teaches North African immigration in Europe, modern imperialism and its culture, history of the Arab world, and history and memory in twentieth-century Europe. He has been a visiting professor at Yale and the University of California, Santa Cruz. His most recent publications include “Secularism in Morocco: A Stagnant Word in Motion,” “Northern Africa: Historical Links with Sub-Saharan Africa,” “Perceptions of External Pressure to Democratization: The Moroccan Case,” and “The ‘Grande Guerre Sainte’: Moroccan Colonial Troops and Workers in the First World War.”

Rajae Rhouni, PhD

A professor of feminist studies at University Chouaib Doukali in Eljadida, Rajae Rhouni is the author of the seminal work on Fatima Mernissi, Secular and Islamic Feminist Critiques in the Work of Fatima Mernissi; Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010.  Her writings include:

• “Decolonizing Feminism: a Look at Fatima Mernissi,” Polyvocal Morrocan Feminisms, New Perspectives. Moha Ennaji, Fatima Sadiqi, and Karen Vintges (Editors.) (in preparation)
• “The Feminist Journey in Morocco: Appropriation, Subversion and the Perils of Cooptation,” conference proceedings, 2nd International Conference on Cultures and Languages in Contact, November 2012, Chouaib Doukkali University, Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences, El Jadida, forthcoming
• “Deconstructing Islamic Feminism: a Look at Fatima Mernissi.” In Islam and Gender in Africa. ed. Margot Badran. Washington DC.: Woodrow Wilson Press: 2011
• “Revisiting Islamic Feminist Hermeneutics.” Islamic Feminism: Current Perspectives. ed. Anitta Kynsilehtto. Tampere : Tampere Peace Research Institute. Occasional Paper No. 96, 2008.

Fatima Ait Ben Lmadani, PhD
Fatima is an associate professor of sociology at the Institute of African Studies in Rabat. She has conducted extensive fieldwork on migrant women in France and Morocco relating to socioeconomic integration, retirement and aging, solitude, and return to home country. She is now working on African migration to Morocco.

Alpha Camara, MA
Alpaha Camara is one of the most important human rights activists in the domain of sub-Saharan migration in Morocco. He is treasurer of the Sub-Saharan Communities Platform (ASCOMS) and the General Secretary of ALECMA ( Association Light on Migration in Morocco). He is also a founding member of ADESGUIM (Association for the Development and Sensitization of Guinean Migrants in Morocco).

Said Bennis, PhD
Said is Professor of Social Sciences at Mohammed V University in Rabat. His research examines cultural and linguistic diversity, social media, hate speech, civil society, cultural and linguistic rights, identity policy, minorities, ethics and values, media anthropology and research methodology. His career is driven by the desire to decompartmentalize research on the MENA region, and construct bridges among separate fields of study. He has lectured at different academic institutions, both in Morocco and abroad, and served as an expert for social cohesion in the Arab world for the UNDP. Among Dr. Bennis’s published works are the book, “Territoire, région et langues au Maroc”, a contribution to “Arabic Varieties: Far and Wide,” and the articles ”The Amazigh Question and National Identity in Morocco,” “Discours islamiste, pluralité linguistique et diversité culturelle au Maroc,” and “Territorialisation linguistique et culturelle au Maroc.” He holds a doctorate in Sociolinguistics from the Mohamed V University in Rabat.

Mohammed Hassar, MD
Professor Mohammed Hassar, an internist and clinical pharmacologist, is an emeritus professor at the Rabat School of Medicine and Pharmacy, Morocco. He also served as director of the Institut National d’Hygiène, Rabat from 1989 to 1993 and director of the Institut Pasteur du Maroc (IPM), Casablanca from 2001 to 2010. During his tenures, he started and developed several activities, including an anti-pioson and pharmacovigilance center (now a WHO collaborating and training center for Arabic and French speaking countries); genetic units; a food, water, and environment safety center, as well as the first and only Biosafety Level-3 laboratory of the Moroccan Ministry of Health.

Professor Hassar has been active in global public health for the past two decades. He has served on several WHO committees and panels. He is also a former board member of IANPHI, the Public Health Institutes of the World. He is currently a member of the Eastern Mediterranean Advisory Committee for Health Research.

Mourad Mkinsi, PhD
Mourad Mkinsi is a lecturer in literary and cultural studies at Ibn Tofail University in Kenitra. He also lectures at the Faculty of Governance and Economics in Rabat. He is the current coordinator of the Etudes Pluridisciplinaires research lab affiliated with Ibn Tofail University and a member of the Gender Studies research group. His academic interests include cultural studies, gender and politics, civil society, and social movements, and he has published several articles on these issues.

Youssouf Amine Elalamy, PhD
Youssouf is an important and widely acclaimed Moroccan writer. He received the award for best travel account from the British Council International for his book Un Marocain à New York, and the Grand Prix Atlas 2001 for his novel Les Clandestins. His novels have been translated into Arabic, English, Spanish, German, Greek, and Dutch. His collection of short stories, Gossip (2004), is the first book entirely written in Darija (Moroccan Arabic). He is a founding member and former president of PEN Morocco and an artist with several exhibitions to his credit in Morocco and abroad. He is also a professor in the English department at Ibn-Tofail University.

Moulay Driss El Maarouf, PhD
Moulay Driss El Maarouf is an associate professor at Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University (Sais), Fez. He completed his PhD on the local and global dynamics of Moroccan music festivals in 2013 at Bayreuth University (Germany), where he was on the BIGSAS and DAAD scholarships. After defending his thesis, he was awarded a three-year postdoctoral grant by the Volkswagen Foundation to complete his research project: Remembering Childhood: Identity, space, and circulation in childhood playing narratives. Toward the end of this fellowship, he joined the DAAD research program, “The Maghreb in Transition: Media, Knowledge and Power” as coordinator and academic advisor from 2016-19. In 2020, he co-founded AfriBIAN (Africa Bayreuth International Alumni Network), after a successful application to DAAD to fund a two-year project entitled Rolling Religion on the African Map: Religion in times of transition. El Maarouf’s academic interests span several topics within cultural studies including cultural theory, music festivals and sub-culture, childhood lives, social movements, scatology and popular culture.

Mohamed Daoudi, PhD
Mohamed Daoudi is assistant professor of English at Hassan II University of Casablanca. He earned his doctoral degree at Mohamed V University, Rabat (2014). He was a Fulbright scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard University. His research interests include American literature and culture in the 20th century, Moroccan-American studies, discourse analysis, and translation. His publications include the Arabic book translation of Vincent Sheean’s An American Among the Riffi. He is a member of the editorial board of the electronic peer-reviewed journal Ribat al-Koutoub.

Jamal Bahmad, PhD
Jamal Bahmad is a senior lecturer in English and film/cultural studies in the Department of English at Mohamed V University. He earned his PhD degree from the University of Stirling with a dissertation on contemporary Moroccan urban cinema. He has held a British Academy postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Leeds and, prior to that, was a research fellow at Philipps-Universität Marburg (Germany). Bahmad was most recently a research fellow at the University of Exeter on the AHRC-funded project: “Transnational Moroccan Cinema.” He specializes and has published widely in the field of North African cultural studies with a focus on cinema, cities, literature, memory, and youth cultures. He recently co-edited a special issue of French Cultural Studies (SAGE, August 2017) on trash cultures in the Francophone world. Bahmad is also the co-editor of a special issue of The Moroccan Cultural Studies Journal on Moroccan cinema (November 2017). In addition to working on his first monograph on Moroccan cinema and globalization, Bahmad recently co-authored a book entitled Moroccan Cinema Uncut: Decentred Voices, Transnational Perspectives (Edinburgh University Press, 2020) with Will Higbee and Florence Martin.