Karima Dirèche
Karima Dirèche is a French-Algerian historian who specializes in the contemporary history of the Maghreb (North Africa). She directed the Institute for Research on the Contemporary Maghreb in Tunis from September 2013 to August 2017.
She studied history and philosophy at the University of Provence, earning a PhD in 1992 with a thesis on emigration from Kabylie to France. She also has qualifications in historical geography and completed a habilitation at Aix-Marseille University in 2012. Her habilitation, titled “To manufacture history and create meaning. Issues of memory and affirmations of identity in post-independence Africa,” analyzes national narratives in Algerian society since 1962.
Dirèche is a director of research at the CNRS. After teaching in colleges and public high schools, she joined CNRS in 2005 as a researcher at the TELEMME center (Time, Space and Languages; Southern and Mediterranean Europe) at the Maison méditerranéenne des sciences de l'homme in Aix-en-Provence. She has taught at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris, the University of Aix-Marseille, the School of Government and Economy in Rabat, and served as research director at the Institute of Political Sciences at the International University of Rabat.
Her research focuses on migration (especially Algerians and Comoro Islanders) during the colonial and post-colonial periods, post-independence historical narratives in the Maghreb, and issues of religion (Judaism, Christianity, and conversions) in Algeria and Morocco, as well as Berber identity. More recently, she has studied neo-evangelical conversion in the Maghreb and the related political and religious issues, and Jewish memory in contemporary Algeria.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 07:20 (CET).