Notes on Contributors
Sandra Barrère
is a comparatist, a researcher associated with the Plurielles team, Bordeaux Montaigne University. She has held positions within the cultural network of foreign affairs, first in Europe (Copenhagen, Bologna), then in the Middle East. Her stay in Lebanon (2011–2014) awakened her interest in the links between literature, history, and politics. She worked with Jean-Paul Engélibert on Politicité de la littérature et des arts contemporains (Essais, 16, 2020) and contributed to collective works, including Littérature, art et monde contemporain, led by Nayla Tamraz (2015), Débordements. Littérature, arts, politique (led by Engélibert, Lampropoulos & Poulin 2022), and the Cahier des tendances Bordeaux of the Fondation Jean Jaurès (2022). Her research entitled Ecrire une histoire tue. Le massacre de Sabra et Chatila dans la littérature et l’art has been published by Editions Classiques Garnier in the collection “Littérature, histoire, politique” in 2022.
Dima de Clerck
holds a master’s degree in Middle Eastern and Arab World Studies from the Institut des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO) and a PhD in Contemporary History from Sorbonne University. Her thesis focused on the Druze and Christian Relations Put to the Test of Wars and Reconciliations, of Representations and Memories. She has authored numerous articles, co-authored Le Liban en guerre (1975–1990) which was awarded the Grand prix d’histoire de l’Institut du Monde arabe, and co-edited Liban: la guerre de 1975–1990 dans le rétroviseur and 1860, History and Memory of a conflict. A research fellow at the Institut français du Proche-Orient, she lectures at universities in France and Lebanon.
Leyla Dakhli
is senior researcher in Modern History at the French Center for National Research (CNRS) – Centre d’histoire sociale des mondes contemporains, Aubervilliers. Her work deals with the study of Arab intellectuals and social history of the South Mediterranean region, with a particular focus on the history of women. She also explores the history and politics of languages, archives and revolts in Tunisia. She is the Principal Investigator of the ERC-founded program DREAM (Drafting and Enacting the revolution in the Arab Mediterranean).
Sune Haugbolle
is a political sociologist of the Middle East and Professor in Global Studies at Roskilde University. His books and articles deal with social memory, political
Syrine Hout
is Professor of English and comparative literature at the American University of Beirut. Publications include Post-War Anglophone Lebanese Fiction. Home Matters in the Diaspora (Edinburgh University Press, 2012), Viewing Europe from the Outside. Cultural Encounters and Critiques in the Eighteenth-Century Pseudo-Oriental Travelogue and the Nineteenth-Century ‘Voyage en Orient’ (Peter Lang, 1997), chapters in Beirut to Carnival City. Reading Rawi Hage (2019); Politics, Culture and the Lebanese Diaspora (2010); Arab Voices in Diaspora (2009); Literature and Nation in the Middle East (2006); Nadia Tuéni: Lebanon: Poems of Love and War (2006); and Christian Encounters with the Other (1998), in addition to numerous journal articles. In parallel with her engagement with contemporary Lebanese cultural production, including cinema and the visual arts, she is currently completing a monograph on multilingualism, particularly on code-switching, in diasporic Anglophone Lebanese fiction.
Felix Lang
is postdoctoral researcher and coordinator of a fellow group at the Merian Center for Advanced Studies in the Maghreb (MECAM)/Philipps-Universität Marburg. He specializes in the Cultural Sociology of the Middle East and North Africa, with a focus on Lebanon and Syria. He is the author of The Lebanese Post-Civil War Novel. Memory, Trauma and Capital (Palgrave 2016) and has published widely on memory and trauma in Lebanese Post-Civil War literature, and the transnational dimension of cultural production in the Arab world.
Craig Larkin
is a Reader in Middle East Politics and Peace and Conflict Studies at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. He is Director of the Centre for the Study of Divided Societies (CSDS) and Co-Convenor of MA Program Conflict Resolution in Divided Societies. He is Research Lead on Memory and Conflict for the FCDO funded Cross-Border Conflict Evidence, Policy and Trends (XCEPT) research program. His publications include Memory and Conflict in Lebanon. Remembering and Forgetting the Past (Routledge 2012), The Struggle for Jerusalem’s Holy Places (co-authored Routledge, 2013) and The Alawis of Syria. War, Faith and Politics in the Levant (with M. Kerr; OUP, 2015). He has
Claire Launchbury
is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in French at the University of Leeds. She studied music at the University of Exeter before doing postgraduate work in music and French Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research concentrates on the intersection of memory, language, resistance and the archive in post-war Lebanon. She has directed special issues on post-war Lebanon in Contemporary French and Francophone Studies with Nayla Tamraz and on the Middle Eastern francosphère in Francosphères. With Charles Forsdick, she is editor of Transnational French Studies, forthcoming with Liverpool University Press and a collection of essays on the Trans-Mediterrean, Urban Bridges, Global Capital(s). Trans-Mediterranean Francosphères co-edited with Megan MacDonald was published by Liverpool in 2021. Her second monograph, Beirut and the Urban Memory Machine, will be published with Amsterdam University Press and a short book on Beirut Soundscapes is being co-authored with Diana Abbani.
Norman Saadi Nikro
has Australian and Lebanese backgrounds. He is a Research Fellow at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin. From 2001 to 2007 he was Assistant Professor at Notre Dame University in Lebanon. He has degrees in critical theory and cultural sociology from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, and a habilitation in Literary and Cultural Studies from the University of Potsdam. He has published widely on Australian literature, film and literary production and social activism in Lebanon, with a focus on cultural and social memory. His books include The Fragmenting Force of Memory. Self, Literary Style, and Civil War in Lebanon (2012), and Milieus of ReMemory. Relationalities of Violence, Trauma, and Voice (2019).
Nayla Tamraz
is a professor of literature and art history at Saint-Joseph University in Beirut, and a visiting professor at the universities of Paris 3 and Paris 1. From 2008 to 2017, she chaired the Department of French Literature at Saint Joseph
Klaus Wieland
is a DAAD lecturer at the American University of Beirut and Maître de conférences at the Université de Strasbourg. His research focuses on gender and queer studies, literature and memory, and intercultural literature. He completed his doctoral thesis at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich and his habilitation at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3; his habilitation thesis Moderne Mannsbilder. Zur Semantik von ‚Männlichkeit‘ in der deutschsprachigen Erzählliteratur der Frühen Moderne (1890–1930) was published in 2024. He is co-editor of the volume Die sozio-kulturelle (De-)Konstruktion des Vergessens. Bruch und Kontinuität in den Gedächtnisrahmen um 1945 und 1989 and of a special issue of the journal Recherches Germaniques: Modellanalysen zur deutschsprachigen Lyrik der Frühen Moderne. 1890–1930. He is a member of the research group Laboratoire interdisciplinaire en études interculturelles (LinCS) at the Université de Strasbourg/CNRS.