Sarra ZAÏED

Sarra ZAÏED, a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Weber Institute for Sociology since 2023, specializes in the colonial and post-colonial history of North Africa. Her current project "Invisible Architects: Jews, Muslims and the Making of Europe" (Freigeist Fellowship) examines France through the lens of religious minorities, building on her doctoral work on Tunisian nationalists and postdoctoral studies of marginalized rural women in North Africa.

• Education: History (Paris-Cité University), Arabic (Bourguiba Institute of Tunis)

ZAÏED's research bridges political history, linguistic practices, and gender studies. She explores transnational circulations between colonial France, North Africa, and the Arab world, focusing on processes of minoritisation, family dynamics, and the intimate as a historical category. Her recent publications analyze language politics in colonial Tunisia and minority identity formation.

Her work intersects with themes from the MWI's sociological theory focus and the Center for Social Innovation's studies on cultural diversity. Awards include the prestigious Freigeist Fellowship, supporting her interdisciplinary approach combining historical, sociological, and postcolonial frameworks.

• Teaching Experience: Lecturer in Middle-East and North African history at INaLCO (2017-2021) and Sciences Po Paris (2019-2020)
• Conferences: Co-organized workshops on North African families (2022), MENA region studies in Aix-en-Provence (2018), and Paris (2017)