Sélima Kebaïli
 |
Sélima Kebaïli is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Geneva (Institute for gender studies), where she teaches classes on gender and postcolonial studies. Her research focuses on development, gender, transitional justice, political violence and victimhood, mainly in the MENA region and Europe. She has degrees in political science from the University of Montreal and in gender studies from the EHESS in Paris, and received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the EHESS in 2021. Using a qualitative approach and a multisite ethnography with both international organizations and victims, she explores the shaping of female victims' status and subjectivity with regard to political violence in transitional justice and post-conflict contexts. She asks how and why certain forms of suffering tend to be recognized, promoted, or otherwise marginalized by international organizations and political actors. She analyzes the effects of such processes on local NGOs and female victims' everyday lives. This question led her to develop a critical analysis of international organizations’ gender mainstreaming norms and practices, using a postcolonial and transnational feminist perspective. Her current book project deals with transitional justice and the making of the category of "indirect victim" in postrevolutionary Tunisia. |
RESEARCH FIELDS
• Gender and International feminist interventions
• Transitional justice
• Violence, Conflict, and Peacebuilding
• International organisations, UN
• Critical development studies
• Postcolonial and transnational feminism
• Islam and anti-veiling policies in Europe and the MENA region
EDUCATION
2016-2021 • PhD, Sociology, Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris
Thesis title : Le genre de la justice transitionnelle. Les effets d’un label international sur des femmes (victimes) en Tunisie (2011-2018). Supervision : Jocelyne Dakhlia, Liora Israël.
2014-2016 • M.A. in Sociology (specialized in Gender Studies), EHESS, Paris
2010-2014 • B.A. in Political Science, University of Montreal
AWARDS
Thesis prize, GIS-MOMM (Scientific Interest Group, Middle East and Muslim Worlds)
Runner-up Thesis prize, Institut de Varenne (Prix-Louis Joinet) – Category Democratization (Democratic transition, Transitional justice and post-conflict)
PEER-REVIEWED JOURNAL PUBLICATIONS
• Kebaïli, Sélima, 2024, « Quand dire, c’est taire: de l’indicible à l’inaudible violence politique », Genèses (accepté, à paraître)
• Kebaïli, Sélima, & Lépinard, Éléonore, 2024, “Negotiating submission. Pedagogies of coloniality in the everyday of veiled Muslim women in France and Switzerland ”, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 1–22.
• Meriem Guellouz, Kebaïli Sélima, 2023, “Francoféminisme en Tunisie : pratiques langagières et enjeux institutionnels”, GLAD! [Online], 14 | 2023, Online since 12 July 2023, connection on 20 September 2023. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/glad/6638.
• Kebaïli Sélima, 2022, “Gendering Transitional Justice: a Racialized Construction of Victimhood in Postrevolutionary Tunisia”, Polity, Special issue: The Global Politics of Victimhood, vol°54, n°4.
• Meriem Guellouz, Kebaïli Sélima, 2021, “Public Hearings: An array of Tunisian lifeworlds in 2016”. Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies, vol°21, n°3.
• Kebaïli Sélima, 2021, « Repenser le rôle des victimes dans la justice transitionnelle : le cas de la ‘Journée de la loyauté’ », L’Année du Maghreb, vol°11, n°26, p. 157-174.
• Kebaïli Sélima 2019, « Des réseaux informels à la managérialisation : une association de femmes dans la Tunisie (post) révolutionnaire », Ethnologie française, n°2, vol 49, p. 311-322.
• Kebaïli Sélima, 2018, « Expérience de la répression et mobilisations de femmes. Le cas d’une association à référent islamique », Archives de sciences sociales des religions, no. 1, vol. 181, p. 121-140.
BOOK CHAPTERS
• Kebaïli, Sélima (2024). “Female victimhood, political agency, and global feminist interventions: a critical perspective of international gender mainstreaming in the Tunisian transitional justice.” In Hannah Partis-Jennings & Clara Eroukhmanoff (eds.), Feminist policymaking in turbulent times: critical perspectives. New York, NY: Routledge.
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
• Kebaïli Sélima et Meriem Guellouz, 2021, “Francofeminism: a postcolonial history”, The Markaz Review. (online) https://themarkaz.org/francofeminism-a-post-colonial-history/
• Kebaïli Sélima, 2017, “Transitional justice in Tunisia: perspectives, limits, and challenges of a politicized process”, Harvard Human Rights Journal, 2017. (Online) http://harvardhrj.com/2017/10/online-symposium-on- transitional-justice/
RESEARCH RESPONSIBILITIES
2021-2024 • Senior researcher, Swiss National Science Foundation, Center for gender studies, Lausanne. Shaping the Legal Consciousness of Intersectional Subjects Accommodating, Negotiating and Contesting Regulations on Islamic Veiling in France, Switzerland, and the U.K.
2020 • Research Engineer, European Research Council (ERC), March Bloch Center, Berlin. ERC-DREAM (DRafting and Enacting Revolutions in the Arab Mediterranean – from the 1950's until today),
2016 • Research assistant, Agence Nationale de Recherche,SciencesPo Paris. Project Converting to ecology.
EDITORIAL RESPONSIBILITIES
Member of the editorial committee of La vie des Idées / Boooks and Ideas
TEACHING
2024 • Fieldworks in gender studies, University of Geneva (Senior lecturer)
2023 • Postcolonialism, decoloniality and otherness, University of Geneva (Senior Lecturer)
2023 • Postcolonialism: intersectional perspectives, Geneva Graduate Institute, (Visiting professor)
2022 • Sociology of Gender, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, (Visiting professor)
2022 • The participation of women and girls in peace-building processes, Master class, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies Executive Programme in Gender.
2017-2019 • Atelier de lecture en études genre, EHESS, Paris, (Junior lecturer)
2017-2019 • Introduction to intersectionality, EHESS, Paris (Junior lecturer)
ORGANIZATION OF CONFERENCES
2022 • The Government of Suffering, two-day conference, with Rita Segato et Veena Das as keynote speakers. With Alejandra Bello Urrego.
2021-2022 • Public events series and monthly research seminar of the Centre for Gender Studies. University of Lausanne (with Ilana Eloit).
2021 • Race and whiteness: thinking the norm, with Sébastien Chauvin, Ilana Éloit, Eléonore Lépinard, and Gaspard Rey, University of Lausanne.
2019 • Women in revolts: Mobilizations, pathways and imaginaries in the Maghreb and the Middle East (1950 – 2020), Two days conference with ERC-DREAM, online.
2017 • Graduate Student Working Conference in Law and Society, with Liora Israël, Corentin Durand and Magda Boutros, EHESS.
ORGANIZATION OF PANELS FOR INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCES/MEETINGS (selection)
2023 • “Revolt, performance and performativity”, with Mariem Guellouz, GIS-MOMM Conference, Lyon.
2022 • “Legal consciousness at the margins”, with Éléonore Lépinard, Law and Society Conference, Lisbon.
2022 • « L’aide internationale au développement en situation de crise : opportunités, négociations et rapports de pouvoir », Insanyyat conference, Tunis.
2022 • « Les langages du genre », with Mariem Guellouz, Insanyyat conference, Tunis.
2022 • « (Dés)ordres dans la justice transitionnelle : genre et politisation des passées violentes après les soulèvements de 2011 », SeSamo Meeting, Naples, with Frédéric Vairel.
CONFERENCE/SEMINAR AS INVITED SPEAKER (selection)
2024 • International Catalan Institute for Peace, Master class on gender, transitional justice and truth commissions.
2023 • University of Torino summer school “Understanding the Middle East”.
Thème de l’école d’été : The Politics of Gender in the Middle East and North Africa.
2022 • « Quand dire c’est taire : les femmes face aux commissions de vérité », Séminaire Sciences Sociales du Droit, Laboratoire Les Afriques dans le Monde (LAM), Sciences Po Bordeaux.
2022 • “Gendering transitional justice: a Racialized construction of Victimhood in postrevolutionarry Tunisia”, Gender Seminar, Graduate Institute, Geneva.
2022 • « Trajectoires plurielles de femmes victimes dans la Tunisie postrévolution », Résistances et protestations en contexte autoritaire, cours animé par Mounia Bennani-Chraibi, Université de Lausanne.
2022 • « Justice transitionnelle et (dé)politisation des mobilisations de femmes victimes », Religions et pouvoirs dans l'espace méditerranéen cours animé par Youssef El Chazli, Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint Denis.
2021 • « Comment les femmes sont devenues des sujets indirectes de la répression en Tunisie », Séminaire Perspective féministe en sociologie politique, CERAPS (Université de Lille).
2021 • « L’approche genre du développement » : une politique globalisée de la subalternité », Séminaire Genre, violence politique et régime d’exception, CEDREF, Paris 7.
HUMAN RIGHTS REPORTS
2022 • Transitional justice in Tunisia from the perspective of female victims, Impunity Watch (with Maher Hanine).
2021 • Policy brief Gender and transitional justice, UN Women.
MEDIA INTERVENTIONS/ INTERVIEWS
2022 • Arab Reform Initiative, podcast on « sensitive fieldworks”: https://www.arab-reform.net/podcast-serie/series-2-3ala-el-maydan/
2021 • Justiceinfo.net (Online) https://www.justiceinfo.net/en/76790-tunisia-women-ordinary-victims-politicalviolence
2021 • La Presse, Tunisa (Online) https://lapresse.tn/98119/selima-kebaili-sociologue-a-la-presse-les-femmes-etlordinaire- de-la-violence-politique/