Dr Idriss Jebari will present his research on the intellectual debates that shaped North Africa from the early 1960s to the early 1980s, recently published in his book Leaping Decolonization: North Africa in the Global 1960s and 1970s. Examining exchanges across Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, the book traces how scholars, leaders and thinkers confronted colonial legacies, reconsidered notions of progress and tradition, and articulated new social and political visions under authoritarian conditions in the decades following independence. Jebari’s insightful research raises important questions about the role and meaning of global history and the voices of intellectual peripheries from the Global South on the world stage.

Idriss Jebari is a Lecturer in Middle East Studies at Trinity College Dublin. He is a historian of Arab thought and the author of Leaping Decolonization: North Africa in the Global 1960s and 1970s (Cambridge University Press, 2026). After completing his doctorate on the history of the production of critical thought in Morocco and Tunisia at the University of Oxford, he held a postdoctoral research fellowship at the American University of Beirut (Lebanon), and at Bowdoin College in Maine (USA). His research has appeared in the International Journal of Middle East Studies, History of the Present, and Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.