Speakers

She is currently the Head of Research and Project Manager of “Nsina?” (Did We Forget?), a documentary funded by Columbia University and Bosch Foundation through which she seeks to create a platform of dialogue where dealing with the Past 55 years of oppression is at the core of the national debate and to launch a participatory action research project with the victims and their families in Tunisia. Ines has been a Legislative Fellow, one of the four Tunisian delegates to work for the US Congress for a month.

She has been placed at the office of Congresswoman Betty McCollum (Minnesota-4). Ines was appointed to serve as a member of the International Jury of the Plural+ Video Festival 2013, put on by the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Ines is an alumnus of the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) as she was nominated by the US Ambassador in Tunis to represent Tunisia in “The Role of NGOs in Promoting Global Women’s Issues Program”. She has also been a certified ESL teacher since 2008 at the Tunisian Ministry of Education. She is an avid reader of Literature and traveller.

Raoudha Ben Othman teaches linguistics at the University of Tunis. She has researched aspects of quality in higher education and published widely on it both academically and in local papers. After the Tunisian revolution, she has researched women and young people conceptions of democracy and democratic transition.

Lamia Benyoussef is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She holds a B.A. in English from L’École Normale Supérieure of Sousse in Tunisia and an M.A. and a Ph.D. in English from Michigan State University. Her areas of specialization are post-coloniality, feminist theory and African literature with a specific emphasis on the Maghreb. Prior to coming to UAB, she taught British, American, and postcolonial Literature at the University of Carthage and the University of the Center (Sousse) in Tunisia. Her current research is Tunisian women during W.W.II. She is author of the Production of the Muslim Woman: Negotiating Text, History and Ideology (Lexington Press 2005). Her most recent articles are “Anne Frank Goes East: The Algerian Civil War and the Nausea of Postcoloniality in Waciny Laredj’s Balconies of the North Sea” (2010), “Teaching about Women and Islam in North Africa: Integrating Postcolonial Feminist Theory in Foreign Culture Pedagogy” (2011), and a book article “Is it the End of State Feminism? Tunisian Women During and After the 14 of January Revolution,” The Arab Revolutions in Context: Socio-Political Implications of the Middle East and Beyond, Editors, Benjamin Isakhan, Fethi Mansouri, and Shahram Akbarzadeh, Melbourne University. In 2013, she published a co-authored article on Islam in Tunisia in Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam Online” and made two contributions to The [Oxford] Encyclopedia of Islam and Women on women and cinema in the Maghreb and the history of Tunisian feminism. Her recent poetry appeared in Contemporary African Women’s Poetry, an anthology compiled by Juliana Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi and Anthonia Kalu, by Lynne Rienner Publishers (2013). Her most recent article, “Year of the Typhus: Operation Torch through the Eyes of Tunisian Women, or How to Make the Holocaust an Arab Story?” appeared in the forum section of The International Journal of Francophone Studies.

Tarek earned his Bachelor’s degree in Political & Administrative sciences at Lebanese University (Lebanon) in 1995, and his Master’s Degree in politics from Murdoch University (WA) in 2015 and is enrolling for his PhD at the moment. His main academic interests are in Islamism, Geopolitics and broader International relations. He started his career as a journalist in 1993 and contributed to major Arab newspapers in the Middle East during the 1990s and early 2000s. Tarek has published numerous articles and opinion pieces, as well as several academic papers (in Arabic and English) and several books in Arabic.

Zouhir Gabsi is a lecturer in Arabic studies at Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia. His research focuses on Berber studies, language in contact situation, language teaching and learning and more recently Islamic Discourse. Two recent papers under review discuss Islamophobia from an Islamic Perspective.

Fethi Mansouri Alfred Deakin Professor Fethi Mansouri holds a Deakin University research chair in migration and intercultural studies and is the Director of the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation. In 2013 he was awarded a UNESCO Chair in comparative research on ‘Cultural Diversity and Social Justice’. He is the editor of the Journal of Intercultural Studies (Routledge) and founding co-editor of theInternational Journal of Social Inclusion (Librello). Professor Mansouri is a global expert advisor to the United Nations (Alliance of Civilisations) on cultural diversity and intercultural relations. He is a leading researcher in the University and a prominent scholar nationally and internationally. Professor Mansouri has published fourteen books, ten major research monographs, more than seventy refereed research articles and book chapters, and many book reviews and media pieces. He has presented more than 150 invited conference and seminar papers and many other invited presentations at national and international symposia.

Nejet Mchala is a Professor of English and critical theory at The Institut Superieur des Langues de Tunis, University of Carthage. Phd in Comparative Studies from La Sorbonne, Paris. Head of the postgraduate program in Cross Cultural Studies. Teaching and research in postmodernity and postcoloniality, Maghrebean Literature and Film. Presently editing for publication a collection of essays titled Dis-Orient-ed express. Recently published on the Tunisian revolution (2012 ‘Re-inventing Wor(l)ds” Published in The Arab Revolution in Context.http://www.amazon.com/The-Arab-Revolutions-Context Democracy/dp/0522861601. 2014- ‘The post Revolution Tunisian Subject, Citizen or Believer’, published In Democratization and Citizenship Discourses in the MENA Region. http://srii.bokorder.se/en-US/Book/2621/democratization-and-citizenship-discourses-in )

Dr Leila Ben Mcharek is an honorary research fellow at the Centre for Muslim States and Societies at the University of Western Australia. She was born in Tunisia, obtained her PhD in Cultural Studies from the Paris 3-Sorbonne-Nouvelle University, and won a Fulbright Fellowship and a Visiting Scholar position at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. She has taught at two Tunisian universities. She has held positions at the British Embassy in Tunis and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Tunis. Her research is currently focussed on aspects of the Tunisian revolution within the Arab Spring context, and on the emergence of radical Islam post Arab Spring, including women jihadism.