Non-State Actors and State-Building in Libya after 2011

EPISODE 111 

Non-State Actors and State-Building in Libya after 2011

 

In this podcast, Professor Amal El-Obeidi discusses power struggles in Libya, as well as the country's instability since 2011. In the absence of a central state after the fall of Qaddafi's regime, processes of national reconciliation and transitional justice have been ineffective. Additionally, the increased number of municipalities after 2014 has led to new political divisions. El-Obeidi argues that local-level governing coalitions have often filled the void of state sovereignty and worked to reduce marginalization, as well as ensure equal access to resources. She focuses specifically on the increasing role of non-state actors in national reconciliation. In this context, tribes played a significant role in Libya's political and social life through ‘urf, or customary law. El-Obeidi highlights the position of women in local reconciliation dialogs within male-dominated councils. In addition to her research, El-Obeidi also speaks of the ways in which academic life has changed significantly for Libya scholars since 2011. The conflict in Libya has not only impacted academic facilities, but has made field research difficult, if not impossible. 

 

Amal El-Obeidi is Professor of Comparative Politics in the Department of Political Science at the University of Benghazi, Libya. Currently she is a fellow researcher at the Institute for African Studies at Bayreuth University, Germany. She is a founding member and vice president of the Libyan Experts Forum for Development since 2017. Author of Political Culture in Libya, her work has appeared in Open Democracy and Middle East Monitor. Prof. El-Obeidi's research interests include gender issue, local reconciliation, governance and security issues, migration, conflict resolution, and peace building. Her current research addresses tribalism in Libya from a gender perspective. 

 

Jacob Mundy, Associate Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at Colgate University, conducted this interview on November 23, 2020. This podcast is part of the "Supporting Critical Research and Strengthening Scholarly Capacity in Algeria, Libya, and Tunisia" project organized by the Centre d'Études Maghrébines à Tunis (CEMAT) and the Centre d'Études Maghrébines en Algérie (CEMA), and funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Prof. Mundy heads the contemporary Libya studies research unit, of which Prof. El-Obeidi is a member.

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Posted by: Hayet Lansari, Librarian, Outreach Coordinator, Content Curator (CEMA).

Centralization and Decentralization in the Middle East and North Africa

EPISODE 110 

Centralization and Decentralization 

in the Middle East and North Africa

In this podcast on local governance in Morocco and Jordan, Dr. Janine A. Clark, Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto, examines how decentralization and centralization mechanisms are implemented at the municipal level. She asks why Morocco decentralized while Jordan did not. Relying on the history of electoral politics and municipal laws in both countries, her research covers the periods from Morocco's independence until 2015, and from 1995 to 2015 in Jordan. Her work specifically considers the 2009 municipal elections in Morocco, and the 2007 municipal elections in Jordan. Clark argues that decentralization processes are determined by governments' coalition strategies since regimes tend to build alliances with certain social groups that keep them in power through elite capture. This, decentralization offers numerous opportunities for local elites to pursue their interests. Clark too shows how decentralization stabilizes authoritarian regimes while centralization can have destabilizing effects.

Janina A. Clark. is author of Local Politics in Jordan and Morocco (Columbia University Press, 2018), Islam, Charity, and Activism: Middle-Class Networks and Social Welfare in Egypt, Jordan, and Yemen (Indiana University Press, 2004) and co-editor of Economic Liberalization, Democratization and Civil Society in the Developing World (Palgrave, 2000), and of numerous single and co-authored articles. She is editor-in-chief of Middle East Law and Governance (MELG).

 

This episode is part of the Society & Politics in the Maghrib series and was recorded on January 13th, 2020 at the Centre d'Études Maghrébines à Tunis (CEMAT)

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Posted by: Hayet Lansari, Librarian, Outreach Coordinator, Content Curator (CEMA)

Bread and Circuits: Illness, Food, and the Course of Empire in Algeria

EPISODE 109
Bread and Circuits:
Illness, Food, and the Course of Empire in Algeria

In the midst of ongoing drought, famine, and epidemic disease in the 1860s, a few settlers in Algiers got sick with a mysterious illness. Investigations determined that the culprit was construction debris from the Haussmannization of Paris, shipped across imperial channels and then used as fuel in a few Algiers bakeries. Lead pain become poison in loaves as this material combusted in colonial bread ovens. The modernization of the imperial metropole, that is, turned into toxic debris in the colony. In this podcast, Dr. Brock Cutler takes a look at how this story about poisoned bread can expose the filaments that tied together an imperial space in the western Mediterranean, along the way illuminating the role bread played in performances of modern imperialism.

Dr. Brock Cutler is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Radford University. He is the author of numerous articles and book chapters dealing with ecology and history in North Africa. His forthcoming book, "Crisis Ecologies: Imperialism, Death, and Debris in Algeria," centered around a massive ecological disaster in which 800,000 Algerians died between 1865 and 1872, explores how the new eco-social dynamics in the late nineteenth century cleaved societies from environments and people from society, creating the new insides and outsides of modernity and imperialism.

 

This episode is part of “Health and Humanities in the Maghrib” a lecture series by the American Institute for Maghrib Studies (AIMS), organized by the  Centre d'Études Maghrébines à Tunis (CEMAT) and the Centre d'Études Maghrébines en Algérie (CEMA), in close collaboration with the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies (TALIM). It was recorded on the 15th of October 2020 between Oran, Radford (VA), St. Petersburg (FL) and Tunis. Dr. Adam Guerin, Associate Professor in the Department of History at Eckerd College, moderated the lecture and debate.

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We thank Dr. Jonathan Glasser, Cultural Anthropologist at the College of William & Mary for his istikhbar in sika on viola for the introduction and conclusion of this podcast. 

 

Realization and editing:  Hayet Lansari, Librarian, Outreach Coordinator, Content Curator (CEMA).

Anti-Elitism in Tunisia: Condition of Political Success?

 EPISODE 108 

Anti-Elitism in Tunisia: Condition of Political Success?

In this podcast, Associate Professor Tarek Kahlaoui reflects on populism in the post-revolutionary context of Tunisia. Kahlaoui questions the idea of an umbrella definition of Tunisian populism, a misleading term that overlooks important nuances. He asks whether populism is a real threat to representative democracy. He compares the two distinctive frontrunners of the 2019 presidential elections, Kais Saied and Nabil Karoui.

Associate Prof. Kahlaoui taught history and Islamic civilization at Rutgers University for a decade after completing his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania in 2008. After serving as the general director of the Tunisian Institute of Strategic Studies, Tunisia's leading think tank tied to the Presidency of the Republic, he resumed teaching history of the Arab World at the South Mediterranean University in Tunis. He is author of a 2020 book on Ahmed Ben Salah, a powerful super-minister under Tunisia's first president, Habib Bourguiba.

This podcast, in CEMAT's Politics Now lecture series, was recorded as part of the roundtable on "Populism, Politics and Popularity - Reflections on the Politics of Today," organized by the Centre d'Études Maghrébines à Tunis (CEMAT) on February 6, 2020, at Le 15 in downtown Tunis.

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Posted by: Hayet Lansari, Librarian, Outreach Coordinator, Content Curator (CEMA).

الشعبوية: قراءة حول المثال التونسي

 EPISODE 107 

الشعبوية: قراءة حول المثال التونسي

في هذا التسجيل الصوتي، يناقش الأستاذ محمد شفيق صرصار آثار الخطاب الشعبوي الذي عرفه المشهد السياسي التونسي منذ 2011 على نتائج الانتخابات المتعاقبة في البلاد، كما يربط هذه الظاهرة ببروز الشخصيات السياسية الشعبوية في الإنتخابات الرئاسية والتشريعية ل 2019. ويأتي الأستاذ صرصار على العوامل التي أعدت المناخ السياسي التونسي لصعود الخطابات الشعبوية مؤكدا على أن تظافر أزمة الأحزاب السياسية والمؤسسات الديمقراطية بتعمق الإشكاليات الاجتماعية والاقتصادية، قد عبّد الطّريق لظهور اوليغارشية سياسية جديدة سيطرت على مسار البناء السياسي والديمقراطي في تونس منذ 2011. ويعتبر الأستاذ أن المناخ السياسي المتسم بفشل السياسيين في تحقيق المطالب الاجتماعية والاقتصادية للثورة وإيغالهم في الانعزال عن المشاغل الشعبية يفسر إلى حد كبير شعبية الشخصيات السياسية التي تتماهى وفكرة "الشعب" محاولة تقمص مشاعره ومطالبه عبر الخطاب والممارسة الشعبوية. 

 

محمد شفيق صرصار هو أستاذ القانون العام بكلية الحقوق والعلوم السياسية بتونس- جامعة تونس المنار والرئيس السابق للهيئة العليا المستقلة للانتخابات (2014-2017). وقد تولى الأستاذ صرصار، غداة الثورة التونسية في 2011 عضوية لجنة الخبراء بالهيئة العليا المستقلة لتحقيق أهداف الثورة والإصلاح السياسي والانتقال الديمقراطي. 

 

تم تسجيل هذه الحلقة من المحاضرات عن "السياسة اليوم" في إطار الندوة التي نظمها مركز الدراسات المغاربية بتونس بتاريخ 6 فيفري 2020 حول "الشعبوية، السياسة والشعبية: تأملات حول سياسات اليوم" بفضاء "Le Quinze " بتونس. 

 

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Posted by: Hayet Lansari, Librarian, Outreach Coordinator, Content Curator (CEMA).

Populism and the Crisis of the Republic

EPISODE 106 

Populism and the Crisis of the Republic

In this podcast, Professor Charles Tripp argues that populism is a form of collective politics that embodies distinct ideas, particularly those about popular sovereignty. Populism, he stresses, claims to communicate and respond directly to the political base – the people – by passing increasingly unpopular political elites and institutions. Three features characterize populism: (1) demagogic simplification; (2) anti-representative confrontation of below and above; and (3) assertion of a clear and uniform will of the people. The rise of populism is a symptom of a crisis of governance and particularly a crisis of the republic, which fails to fulfill its promises of citizen equality. From this perspective, populism becomes a technique for disguising deep inequalities of power.

Charles Tripp is Professor Emeritus of Politics with reference to the Middle East and North Africa at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, and is a Fellow of the British Academy. His PhD was from SOAS and examined Egyptian politics in the latter years of monarchy. At SOAS he had been head of the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies and is one of the co-founders of the Centre for Comparative Political Thought. His research has mainly focused on political developments in the Middle East and includes the nature of autocracy, war and the state, as well as Islamic political thought, the politics of resistance and the relationship between art and power. He is currently working on a study of the emergence of the public and the rethinking of republican ideals in North Africa.

This podcast, in CEMAT's Politics Now lecture series, was recorded as part of the roundtable on "Populism, Politics and Popularity - Reflections on the Politics of Today," organized by the Centre d'Études Maghrébines à Tunis (CEMAT) on February 6, 2020, at Le 15 in downtown Tunis.

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Posted by: Hayet Lansari, Librarian, Outreach Coordinator, Content Curator (CEMA).

Jedba, Jinns, and Hāl: Bodily Modalities of Mental-Emotional Health and 'Musico-thérapie' in Algeria

EPISODE 105 

Jedba, Jinns, and Hāl: Bodily Modalities of Mental-Emotional Health and 'Musico-thérapie' in Algeria

In this podcast, Dr. Tamara Turner illustrates the inextricable relationship between mental-emotional health, sound, and consciousness through a spectrum of 'psychological' states that are locally mapped in Algeria as bodily modalities: jedba, hāl, and bori. These three bodily modalities constitute a wide and fluctuating spectrum of musically-cultivated, ritual trance dancing seen in various contexts from weddings and festivals to 'Sufi' hadrat, particularly among the Dīwān of Sīdī Bilāl tarīqa. Drawing from in-depth ethnographic fieldwork on Morocco and Algeria, Dr. Turner shows how notions of 'music' exceed social, symbolic, and aesthetic valence because sound and music are thought about medicinally as vibrating agents in ongoing health maintenance.

 

A cultural anthropologist, Dr. Tamara Turner is a researcher at the Center for the History of Emotions at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. Her research is at the intersection of psychological anthropology, musical and performance practice, and affect studies. She specializes in North African Sufism, anthropology of religion and medicine, and the links between cultural notions of affect, consciousness, and mental-emotional health. Her doctoral thesis was the first research to thoroughly document the musical repertoire, practice, and history of Algerian dīwān, a nocturnal trance ritual of the Bilaliyya Sufi Order that emerged out of the trans-Saharan slave trade. As a musician as well as a scholar, she studied with ritual musicians and experts, attending and documenting dīwān rituals across Algeria from the Mediterranean coast to the Saharan Desert. Analytically, Dr. Turner's work investigates the critical role of emotions and affects in rituals in general, particularly as they pertain to varieties of altered states of 'consciousness,' social and trans-personal pain and suffering, and memory. In 2017, her doctoral thesis won an Elsevier Outstanding Thesis prize. Her research in Algeria and Morocco has previously been funded by various grants from King's College London, the British Forum for Ethnomusicology, the Centre d'Études Maghrébines en Algérie, and the West African Research Association.

 

This episode is part of “Health and Humanities in the Maghrib” a lecture series by the American Institute for Maghrib Studies (AIMS), organized by the Centre d'Études Maghrébines à Tunis (CEMAT) and the Centre d'Études Maghrébines en Algérie (CEMA), in close collaboration with the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies (TALIM). It was recorded on the 1st of October 2020 between Berlin, Oran, and Tunis. Dr. Robert P. Parks, CEMA Director, moderated the lecture and debate.

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We thank Dr. Tamara Turner, Ethnomusicologist and Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Center for the History of Emotions, for her interpretation of Sidna Ali, from the  diwan repertoir.  

 

Realization and editing:  Hayet Lansari, Librarian, Outreach Coordinator, Content Curator (CEMA).

Of Jinn Theory and Germ Theory: Translating Bacteriological Medicine, and Islamic Law in Algeria

 EPISODE 104 

Of Jinn Theory and Germ Theory: Translating Bacteriological Medicine, and Islamic Law in Algeria

In this podcast, focusing on colonial Algeria c. 1890 to 1940, Dr. Hannah-Louise Clark explores how Muslim intellectuals and ordinary people learned about microbes and responded to bacteriological medicine. Many Algerians feared invisible spirits (jinn) and sought the healing powers of saints and exorcists. Was it then permitted to use French treatments and follow rules of Pasteurian hygiene? Specialists in Islamic law, other intellectuals, and unlettered villagers showed a persistent concern with these and other questions in the wake of colonial conquest and violence, as novel techniques, therapeutics, and forms of epistemic authority were introduced, and new visions of religious orthodoxy and national revival were formulated. Examining material culture and writings across a range of genres and formats, Dr. Clark argues that Islamic tradition and law were integral to the emerging science and culture of microbes in 20^th-century Algeria. While Islamic reformists sought to displace jinn theories, other Algerian intellectuals and colonial officials found it convenient to explain germs in terms of jinn. Both French and Muslim elites combined religious principles and hygiene to advance their competing projects of political and social control targeted at the Muslim family, thereby attempting to displace women’s jinn-based practices.

Dr. Hannah-Louise Clark is lecturer in global economic and social history at the University of Glasgow. Her work investigates cross-cultural translations of knowledge and professional hierarchies, technology transfer, state governance, and epidemics in North Africa, c. 1800-present, with a current focus on Algeria. Clark pays particular attention to neglected archives and Arabic-language sources to document and analyse long-term local, regional, and trans-regional trends in health and social welfare. Her research has informed teaching on history of medicine within Algeria’s medical curriculum, and has been recognized and supported by awards and grants from the National Endowment of the Humanities “Constructing African Medical Heritage: Legacies of Empire and the Geopolitics of Culture, 1890–1990,” with Helen Tilley [PI] and Michael Afolayan, 2020-2023), The Leverhulme Trust, Princeton University Committee on Academic Programmes for Alumni, and the US Department of Education DDRA Fellowship and others. Clark also collaborated with cultural heritage professionals and students at the University of Glasgow to develop “global history hackathons” as a format for research incubation and teaching with archives and museum collections. She is currently working on a book manuscript on race, religion, and the Pasteurian public health worldview in early 20^th-century Algeria.

This episode is part of “Health and Humanities in the Maghrib,” a lecture series by the American Institute for Maghrib Studies (AIMS), organized by the Centre d'Études Maghrébines à Tunis (CEMAT) and the Centre d'Études Maghrébines en Algérie (CEMA), in close collaboration with the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies (TALIM). It was recorded on the 26th of October 2020 between Glasgow, Oran, Oxford, and Tunis. Dr. James McDougall, Professor of History at St. Anthony's College, University of Oxford, moderated the lecture and debate.

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We thank our friend Ignacio Villalón for his guitar performance for the introduction and conclusion of this podcast. 

Realization and editing:  Hayet Lansari, Librarian, Outreach Coordinator, Content Curator (CEMA).

On Memory, Remembering and Mourning in the Maghrib Since the Tunisian Revolution

Episode 103

On Memory, Remembering and Mourning in the Maghrib Since the Tunisian Revolution

In this podcast, Dr. Idriss Jebari contemplates the outpouring of memory from the former leftists of the Perspectives movement, following the 2011 Tunisian Revolution. In a series of published memoirs, the likes of Gilbert Naccache, Fethi Ben Haj Yahia and others take their readers from their experience of prison in the sixties and seventies, as well as their reflections on critical moments of Tunisia's political transition, particularly transitional justice and national reconciliation. Through these memoirs, Dr. Jebari explores how they could help write new histories for the Tunisian people: one that is plural and democratic. On the ten-year anniversary of the Revolution, after unprecedented transformations and the global pandemic, we are reminded of the fleeting nature of memory in light of the tragic passing of several figures from the Maghrib's past. 

 

Dr. Idriss Jebari is Al Maktoum Assistant Professor in Middle East Studies at Trinity College Dublin. His work investigates the distinctiveness of the Maghribi critique of modernity in contemporary Arab intellectual and cultural history. He completed a doctorate on the history of the production of critical thought in Morocco and Tunisia at the University of Oxford on the intellectual projects of Moroccan thinker Abdallah Laroui and Tunisian thinker Hichem Djaït. He then held an Arab Council for Social Sciences postdoctoral fellowship at the American University of Beirut to study the dynamics of intellectual and cultural exchanges between the Maghrib and the Mashriq after 1967. He has published on the intellectual projects of several North African intellectual figures such as Abdelkebir Khatibi, Mohamed Abed al-Jabri and Malek Bennabi, and how the younger generations remember this intellectual heritage and the Arab Left. He is currently working on his first book manuscript that will address the critical societal debates that shaped North Africa's path today modernity in the sixties and seventies.

 

This podcast was recorded between Tunis and Dublin on January 8, 2021, by the Centre d'Études Maghrébines à Tunis (CEMAT) and the Centre d'Études Maghrébines en Algérie (CEMA) and is part of the special podcast series, "The Ten-Year Anniversary of Tunisia's Revolution (January 14, 2021)." The podcast was introduced by Dr. Robert P. Parks, CEMA Director.

 

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We thank Yesser Jradi for his interpretation of "Narja3lk dima." A talented artist, Yesser is a painter and musician with interests in cinema and theatre.

 

Posted by Hayet Lansari, Librarian, Outreach Coordinator, Content Curator (CEMA).

Conversation with Lisa Anderson and Tarek Kahlaoui: Reflections on Tunisia's State Building History and Contemporary Democratization Experience

Episode 102

Conversation with Lisa Anderson and Tarek Kahlaoui: Reflections on Tunisia's State Building History and Contemporary Democratization Experience

In this discussion, Lisa Anderson and Tarek Kahlaoui reflect on Tunisia's post-independence state-building history and the country's contemporary democratization experience. The conversation draws listeners to the transformative moments that preceded the 2011 Revolution, which had subsequent pivotal effects. Reflecting on their own intellectual and professional engagement with Tunisia, the speakers underscore the shortcomings of minimalist and purely institutional academic approaches to the study and practice of democracy.

Prof. Anderson is the James T. Shotwell Professor Emirita of International Relations at Columbia University, former President of the American University in Cairo, the Dean Emerita of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, and author of The State and Social Transformation in Tunisia and Libya: 1830-1980 (Princeton University Press, 1986).

Associate Prof. Kahlaoui taught history and Islamic civilization at Rutgers University for a decade after completing his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania in 2008. After serving as the general director of the Tunisian Institute of Strategic Studies, Tunisia's leading think tank tied to the Presidency of the Republic, he resumed teaching history of the Arab World at the South Mediterranean University in Tunis. He is author of a 2020 book on Ahmed Ben Salah, a powerful super-minister under Tunisia's first president, Habib Bourguiba.

This podcast recorded on January 6, 2021 between Tunis and New York, as a part of CEMA and CEMAT's "The Ten-Year Anniversary of Tunisia's Revolution (January 14, 2011)" lecture series. Organized by the Tunis Office of Columbia Global Centers (CGC) with the Centre d'Études Maghrébines à Tunis (CEMAT) and the Centre d'Études Maghrébines en Algérie (CEMA), this podcast was moderated by Dr. Laryssa Chomiak, CEMAT Director, and introduced by Youssef Cherif, CGC Director. 

 

 

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We thank Yesser Jradi for his interpretation of "Narja3lk dima." A talented artist, Yesser is a painter and musician with interests in cinema and theatre. 

 

Posted by Hayet Lansari, Librarian, Outreach Coordinator, Content Curator (CEMA).

"Willis from Tunis, 10 ans et toujours vivant!" - Entretien avec Nadia Khiari

 Episode 101

Willis from Tunis, 10 ans et toujours vivant!

Entretien avec Nadia Khiari

Le chat Willis from Tunis est né jeudi le 13 janvier 2011 au moment où le président tunisien déchu, Ben Ali, prononçait un discours dans lequel il promettait, entre autres, la liberté d'expression. Cette chronique graphique était pour l'auteur un moyen de partager avec son entourage direct via les réseaux sociaux, son ressenti vis-à-vis de la situation politique que la Tunisie vivait. Sur un ton satirique, le matou commentait l'actualité politique au jour le jour et n'a pas cessé depuis.

 

Dans ce podcast, Dr. Meriem Guetat, Directrice-adjointe du Centre d'Études Maghrébines à Tunis (CEMAT), s’entretient avec Nadia Khiari sur son nouveau livre de dessins Willis from Tunis, 10 ans et toujours vivant !, paru récemment aux Éditions Elyzad. La conversation relate l'engagement de Nadia Khiari pour la liberté d'expression et les droits humains, la portée de son œuvre caricaturale et artistique ainsi que les développements du personnage Willis, ponctués par la révolution elle-même.

 

Nadia Khiari, enseignante en arts plastiques, peintre et dessinatrice, a publié plusieurs recueils de chroniques sur la révolution tunisienne. Elle publie ses dessins dans Siné Mensuel, Courrier International et est membre de Cartooning for Peace. Elle a reçu le Prix Honoré Daumier (2012), les insignes de Docteur Honoris Causa de l'Université de Liège (2013), le prix international de la satire politique (2014), le prix Couilles au cul (2016) ainsi que le Prix Sokol (2018).

Ce podcast a été enregistré le 5 janvier 2021 par le Centre d'Études Maghrébines à Tunis (CEMAT) dans le cadre de la série "Ten-Year Anniversary of Tunisia's Revolution (January 14, 2021)."

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Nous remercions Yesser Jradi pour son interprétation de Narja3lk dima. Artiste talentueux, Yesser est peintre et musicien, il s’intéresse aussi au cinéma et au théâtre.

Posté par: Hayet Lansari, Bibliothécaire / Chargée de la diffusion des activités scientifiques (CEMA).