Naoual Belakhdar is a research associate and PhD candidate at the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Politics (Freie Universität Berlin). She studied Political Science, Arabic Literature and Islamic Sciences at the Free University of Berlin and the Institut d’Études Politiques in Paris. Her research and teaching interests lie in social movements and various forms of political participation and resistance in the Middle East and North Africa as well as on statehood, memory, collective identities and film in the Arab world. She also worked on the consequences of the Arab Upheavals on Euro-Mediterranean relations. Her PhD project deals with the transformation of state-society relations in post-civil-war Algeria, analyzed through the lens of social protest and memory. Her latest publications include „ « L’éveil du Sud »ou quand la contestation passe par la marge. Une analyse du mouvement des chômeurs Algériens », in : Politique Africaine n°137, 2014 and “Il n’y a pas d’état’. Réflexion sur le phénomène des émeutes dans l’Algérie de l’après guerre civile” (Actes du Colloques, forthcoming) and “Political Participation Beyond the Polling Station in Algeria. Insights from Tizi-Ouzou” (in: Bouziane, Malika; Harders, Cilja; Hoffmann, Anja (eds.): Local Politics and Contemporary Transformation in the Arab World – Governance Beyond the Center. Series: Governance and Limited Statehood. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

naoual.belakhdar@fu-berlin.de