Muriam Davis

Biography

Muriam Haleh Davis is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research focuses on the connections among the social sciences, racial classification and national identity in North Africa and the Middle East. She is currently working on the history of the social sciences and decolonisation, with a particular focus on the discipline of sociology.

She was the co-editor of North Africa and the Making of Europe: Governance, Institution and Culture (Bloomsbury Academic Publishing, 2018). Her recent publications include Incommensurate Ontologies? Anti-Black Racism and the Question of Islam in French Algeria (Lateral, Spring 2021) and The Transformation of Man in French Algeria: Economic Planning and the Postwar Social Sciences (Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 52(1), 73-94, 2017).

She is an editor for the Maghreb page of Jadaliyya and serves on the editorial board of the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP). She is also a regular commentator on French and Algerian politics, and has contributed to a number of media outlets including Al Jazeera English, Public Books, Truthout and Jadaliyya.

She was a postdoctoral fellow at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence and a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Aix-Marseille University (IMéRA).

She earned an MA in Arab Studies from Georgetown University (2004–2006); MA in Culture and Theory, University of California, Irvine (2006–2008) and PhD in History from NYU (2008–2015).

SAF participation:
March Meeting 2022