Postdoc
Following the obtention of my PhD in history in 2015 at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, based on an institutional approach to the armed forces in Mauritania during decolonization. I am currently studying the history of the military in Mauritania, Niger and Mali during the late colonial and early post-colonial years. With a particular focus on the comparative history of post-colonial Sahelian-Saharan state-building and policing, from the perspective of men in uniform.
“My participation in MaDAf will allow me to study the memories of war trauma experienced by African soldiers during two distinct periods (late colonial and postcolonial times) and the “ordinary” madness of the military world, hypothesizing that power and impunity, combined with the means of violence in an authoritarian postcolonial context, expose men in uniform to forms of mental illness. Finally, I will be interested in how the institution ends up normalizing forms of psychopathology.”