Dr. Mehdi Ayachi

Articles

• 2025 "The Apolitical Autonomy of the Omani Literary Field," Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée no. 160 (forthcoming).
• 2024 – “L’islam comme tradition? Thinking about Talal Asad”. L’Homme. Revue Française d’Anthropologie 250 : 5-24.
• 2022 – “De l’exil à l’appareil d’État : trajectoires élitaires des "pionniers" de la modernité littéraire omanaise”, Arabian Humanities, 15.

Book Reviews

• 2025 "Al-Sa‘dī, N. 2022, 'Al-‘ulamā’ wa al-sulṭa fī ‘umān: 1749–1913'," The Ulama and Power in Oman 1749–1913, Catalogue des Sciences Humaines Arabes, Livres des deux rives, un dialogue méditerranéen par le livre, ATLAS & Institut Français.
• 2025 "Sachedina, A. 2023, Cultivating the Past, Living the Modern. The Politics of Time in the Sultanate of Oman," Critique Internationale.

Press Articles

• 2025 "Oman. A Modernized but Still Authoritarian Dynasty," Orient XXI, online.

Dictionary Entries (4)

• 2025 "Ethnocentrism," Dictionnaire de philosophie générale, Paris, Éditions Bouquins.
• 2025 "Taboo," Dictionnaire de philosophie générale, Paris, Éditions Bouquins.
• 2025 "Reflexivity," Dictionnaire de philosophie générale, Paris, Éditions Bouquins.
• 2025 "Information," Dictionnaire de philosophie générale, Paris, Éditions Bouquins.
   

2024-2026 - Postdoctoral Fellowship – Fyssen Foundation
2024 - Thesis Award Recipient, Martine Aublet Foundation, Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac
2024 - Thesis Award Recipient, Institute for the Study of Islam and Muslim Societies, Paris
2024 - Honorable Mention for Thesis Prize, School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Paris
2017-2018 - Associate Researcher with Doctoral Mobility Grant – French Research Center on the Arabian Peninsula, Kuwait City
2016-2019 - Doctoral Contract – School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Paris
2016 - Grant from the Martine Aublet Foundation – Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac, Paris

Papers presented at colloquia, workshops, and summer schools

• 2025.12 "Reading Saba Mahmood and Overcoming Epistemological Bias," Twenty Years Later, (Re)reading Saba Mahmood, INALCO, Paris.
• 2025.10 "Interstitial Spaces and Existential Clearings: Exile and the Transnationalization of the Omani Intellectual Field," Interstitial Spaces of Intellectual Production – Gulf Countries, Yemen, Sudan, CCMO, Paris.
• 2025.06 "God, Society, the Afterlife. Three Propositions for Thinking 'Liberal' Islams," Islam and Social Change: Tradition Tested by Time, GIS MOMM, Strasbourg.
• 2025.06 "Naming the People, Framing a World. On the Affective and Ontological Grounds of Collective Identification," Who are ‘the people’? An interdisciplinary seminar on political, cultural, legal and artistic imaginings of ‘the people’, New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi.
• 2025.02 "The Reader-State and the 'Omani Way': Governmentalizing the Public Sphere," Public Space(s) in the Maghreb and Mashreq: From Concept to Fieldwork. Cross-reflections on Vocabulary, Empirical Objects & Methods, Centre Jacques Berque, Rabat.