Dr. Ramzi Ben Amara
Visited the IAS from August to September 2024
My name is Ramzi Ben Amara and I am an assistant professor at the University of Sousse in Tunisia.
Thank to the scholarship of the Institute of African Studies (IAS), University of Bayreuth, I was able to travel to my almer mater for a short stay during the summer of 2024. This opportunity gave me a unique chance to reconnect again with several colleagues and scholars in the field of African Studies. In fact, my research can be summarized in three major components:
- consolidate the contact between the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences and the University of Bayreuth and make plans for future perspectives
- work on an individual publication: an article related to the project “Toward an Islamic Cultural Archive”. I extensively worked on my article “ One or two Types of Education: Islamic Learning in Post-Independence Tunisia”
- Setting up a research proposal on the “Religious experiences of Sub-Saharan-Migrants in Tunisia”
As for the first point, I hold several discussions with my supervisor Dr. Franz Kogelmann, with Prof. Spittler, Prof. Rüdiger Seesemann, Dr. Barbara Polak, Dr. Eva Spies, Prof. Berner, Dr. Remi Tchekothe (currently director of the Institute of African Studies, Viena University), and Dr. Hansa Diman among other. Most of the discussions were directed at intensifying the cooperation between Sousse and Bayreuth. The former DAAD project between 2015 and 2017 and setting up the MA program in African Studies in Sousse (functional from 2017) gave ground for more mobilities in both directions and revived the set of activities already organized from 2015 (learning sessions, conferences, workshops, short visits, etc…) and frozen by the Corona-19 time. All colleagues were ready to support and contribute to the project of African Studies in Sousse.
I also introduced the collection “Etudes d´Anthropologie Africaine” that I initiated with the French anthropologist Pierre Noel Deinieuil in Tunis. We already have published three books on African Studies: one on female migrants from Sussharan Africa in Tunisia by Asma Hadj Hassan, currently accomplishing her PhD in Bayreuth/ at BIGSAS; one on the image of Africa in Tunisian School books by Rahma Talmoudi; and the third by Sawsen Fray-Amor on the political Engagement on Tunisia after 2011. In print, we have volume four on “Single Mothers in Tunisia” by Abir Menssi.
As for point two, I extensively worked on my article “One or two types of Education: Islamic learning in post-Independence Tunisia”. The library gave me a unique chance to work far from home and any administrative load. I make use of my time in Bayreuth to write and redraft my text which is supposed to be accomplished very soon.
The third and last component of my stay in Bayreuth was a research proposal that I had in mind during the last few years in relation to geopolitical development in Tunisia and its confrontation with the phenomenon of Migration. In fact, I developed a project – which is like what Sophie Bava did for the Moroccan case (Bava Sophie, Coyault, Bernard, Nejmi, Malik (2022): Dieu va ouvrir la mer: Christianismes Africains au Maroc, Rabat: Kulte.).