Zahra Ali

Zahra Ali
زهراء علي
OccupationSociologist
Academic background
Alma materÉcole des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales
Academic work
DisciplineSociology
Sub-discipline
Gender studies, Middle Eastern studies
InstitutionsRutgers University–Newark
Notable works
Women and Gender in Iraq: Between Nation-Building and Fragmentation (2018)

Zahra Ali (Arabic: زهراء علي) is a French-Iraqi sociologist and associate professor of sociology at Rutgers University–Newark, where she founded and directs the Critical Studies of Iraq initiative.[1][2] Her research focuses on women, gender, and feminist movements in Iraq and the wider Middle East, with a particular focus on the period following the 2003 Iraq War.[1] Her 2018 book Women and Gender in Iraq: Between Nation-Building and Fragmentation was published by Cambridge University Press in its Cambridge Middle East Studies series and has been translated into Arabic and French.[3] Alongside her academic work, Ali describes herself as a social activist with interests in Muslim feminism, Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Early life and education

Ali was born to Iraqi parents who had left Iraq as political exiles during the rule of Saddam Hussein and settled in France. She grew up in Rennes.[4] Her parents returned to Iraq after the 2003 US-led invasion; several members of her immediate family, including her father, were killed in Baghdad during the subsequent period of unrest.[5]

As a teenager in Rennes, in the period leading up to the 2004 French law on conspicuous religious symbols in schools, Ali helped found a feminist organization that both included Muslim and non-Muslim members, and became involved in anti-war and anti-racist activism.[4]

Ali received her doctorate in sociology from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. Her doctoral fieldwork on women's political activism in post-invasion Iraq was supported by research grants from the French Institute of the Near East (IFPO) and the Académie française.[4]

Career

Ali joined the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Rutgers University–Newark as an assistant professor in August 2017, holding a joint appointment in the school's peace and conflict studies program.[4] She was later promoted to associate professor.[2]

In spring 2022 Ali founded the Critical Studies of Iraq initiative, housed within Rutgers–Newark's International Institute for Peace.[5] The initiative supports research partnerships between US-based scholars and Iraqi academics, feminists and civil-society organizations, with Iraqi partners including the Iraqi Al-Amal Association.[5][6] In April 2024 the Carnegie Corporation of New York awarded the initiative a three-year, $450,000 grant.[5]

Earlier in her career, Ali was a visiting academic at the Centre for Gender Studies of the School of Oriental and African Studies (2013–14), a research fellow of the Social Science Research Council and the LSE Middle East Centre (2019), a member of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study (2021–22) and a research fellow at the Economic Research Forum (2021–22).[1] She is a member of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences and a faculty affiliate of the Rutgers Center for Security, Race and Rights.[1]

Ali has served on the editorial boards of the journals Contemporary Sociology and Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East.[1]

Research

Ali's scholarly work draws on transnational and postcolonial feminism and on decolonial thought.[1] Her published research addresses three overlapping areas: Iraqi women's social, economic and political history; Muslim feminisms in France and the wider Muslim world; and the theory and practice of knowledge production in and about the Middle East.[1]

Women and Gender in Iraq

Women and Gender in Iraq: Between Nation-Building and Fragmentation (Cambridge University Press, 2018) was published as volume 51 of the Cambridge Middle East Studies series.[3] The book combines a social history of Iraqi women's lives since the formation of the modern Iraqi state with an ethnography of women's rights organizations and activism in post-2003 Iraq, drawing on fieldwork conducted between 2010 and 2017 in Baghdad, Erbil, Sulaymaniyah, Najaf, Kufa, Karbala and Nasiriyah and interviews with around 80 Iraqi women activists across the political and religious spectrum.[7][8] A French translation by Nada Ghosn was published by Éditions Syllepse in 2022, and an Arabic translation by Wasan Qasim was published by the Academic Center for Research (Baghdad) in 2023.[1]

Reviewing the book in the Journal of Middle East Women's Studies, Marta Agosti described it as "an obligatory read for understanding Iraq's current wave of civil unrest" arguing that Ali's contribution extended beyond gender studies into the political analysis of Iraqi state-building.[9] Yasmin Chilmeran reviewed the book in the International Feminist Journal of Politics.[10] The book was also reviewed in the Journal of Contemporary Study of Islam[8] and discussed at length in a New Books Network interview hosted by SherAli Tareen.[11] A review in Middle East Monitor described Ali's fieldwork as "groundbreaking".[12]

Other books

Ali edited Féminismes islamiques (La Découverte, 2012), a French-language volume on Muslim feminist thought with contributions from Margot Badran, Asma Barlas, Ziba Mir-Hosseini and Asma Lamrabet, among others.[1]

In 2024 Ali and Sonia Dayan-Herzbrun, professor at the University of Paris, co-edited Decolonial Pluriversalism, published by Rowman & Littlefield in its Creolizing the Canon series.[1]

Public commentary and activism

Alongside her academic work, Ali writes regularly for academic-public outlets including Jadaliyya, Middle East Report, The New Arab, Orient XXI and The Funambulist.[1] She has described herself as "a Muslim feminist activist involved in anti-racist and anti-imperialist struggles".[13]

On France, Ali has been a long-standing critic of state laïcité as applied to Muslim women's dress; her edited volume Féminismes islamiques frames Muslim feminist thought as part of what Ali describes as an effort to "decolonize" hegemonic Western feminism.[1]

On Iraq, Ali has written extensively on the October 2019 uprising (Thawra Teshreen), including in Middle East Report,[14] Current History,[15] and Third World Quarterly.[16] She has argued that successive US military interventions in Iraq dismantled the country's educational and research institutions and that scholarship on Iraq has been disproportionately produced by researchers based in or tied to the United States.[17] She has also written, in English and Arabic, on debates over revisions to the Iraqi personal status code, including provisions on the legal age of marriage.[18]

On the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the war in Gaza, Ali has publicly expressed support for Palestinian solidarity movements, including in a 2025 essay for The New Arab titled "As an Iraqi and a Feminist, I Stand with the People of Iran and Palestine. Not with their Oppressors".[19] She is a faculty affiliate of the Rutgers Center for Security, Race and Rights, which lists her public commentary among its affiliated faculty publications.[20]

Selected publications

Books

  • Ali, Zahra (2018). Women and Gender in Iraq: Between Nation-Building and Fragmentation. Cambridge Middle East Studies. Vol. 51. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Ali, Zahra; Dayan-Herzbrun, Sonia (2024). Decolonial Pluriversalism. Creolizing the Canon. Rowman & Littlefield.
  • Ali, Zahra, ed. (2012). Féminismes islamiques (in French). Paris: La Découverte.

Selected articles

  • Ali, Zahra (2024). "Theorising uprisings: Iraq's Thawra Teshreen". Third World Quarterly. 45 (10): 1573–1588.
  • Ali, Zahra (2019). "Iraqis Demand a Country". Middle East Report (292/293): 2–5.
  • Ali, Zahra (2019). "Feminisms in Iraq: Beyond the Religious and Secular Divide". Gender a výzkum / Gender and Research. 20 (2): 47–.
  • Ali, Zahra; Khalef, Safaa (2018). "Southern Discontent Spurs an Iraqi Protest Movement". Current History. 117 (803): 338–343.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 "Zahra Ali". Rutgers SAS-Newark. Rutgers University–Newark. Retrieved 22 June 2026.
  2. 1 2 "Zahra Ali". Research with Rutgers. Rutgers University. Retrieved 22 June 2026.
  3. 1 2 Ali, Zahra (2018). Women and Gender in Iraq: Between Nation-Building and Fragmentation. Cambridge Middle East Studies. Vol. 51. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  4. 1 2 3 4 "Zahra Ali Explores the Lives of Iraqi Women". Rutgers University. 17 January 2018. Retrieved 22 June 2026.
  5. 1 2 3 4 "Zahra Ali Awarded $450K Carnegie Corporation Grant to Continue Work in Iraq". Rutgers University–Newark. 10 April 2024. Retrieved 22 June 2026.
  6. ↑ "Critical Studies of Iraq". Rutgers SAS-Newark. Retrieved 22 June 2026.
  7. ↑ Ali, Zahra (13 September 2018). "Women and Gender in Iraq: Between Nation-Building and Fragmentation (New Texts Out Now)". Jadaliyya. Retrieved 22 June 2026.
  8. 1 2 "Review of Women and Gender in Iraq by Zahra Ali". Journal of Contemporary Study of Islam.
  9. ↑ Agosti, Marta (2022). "Women and Gender in Iraq: Between Nation-Building and Fragmentation". Journal of Middle East Women's Studies. 18 (1): 134–136. doi:10.1215/15525864-9494192.
  10. ↑ Chilmeran, Yasmin (2019). "Women and Gender in Iraq: Between Nation-Building and Fragmentation, by Zahra Ali". International Feminist Journal of Politics. 21 (2): 344–345.
  11. ↑ "Zahra Ali, "Women and Gender in Iraq: Between Nation-Building and Fragmentation" (Cambridge UP, 2018)". New Books Network. 16 December 2019. Retrieved 22 June 2026.
  12. ↑ "Women and Gender in Iraq: Between Nation-Building and Fragmentation". Middle East Monitor. 27 January 2020. Retrieved 22 June 2026.
  13. ↑ Ali, Zahra (2018). "About the author". Women and Gender in Iraq: Between Nation-Building and Fragmentation. Cambridge Middle East Studies. Vol. 51. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  14. ↑ Ali, Zahra (2019). "Iraqis Demand a Country". Middle East Report (292/293): 2–5.
  15. ↑ Ali, Zahra; Khalef, Safaa (2018). "Southern Discontent Spurs an Iraqi Protest Movement". Current History. 117 (803): 338–343.
  16. ↑ Ali, Zahra (2024). "Theorising uprisings: Iraq's Thawra Teshreen". Third World Quarterly. 45 (10): 1573–1588.
  17. ↑ "Zahra ALI - Rutgers at Newark". Academia.edu. Retrieved 22 June 2026.
  18. ↑ Ali, Zahra (2024). "In Iraq, the personal is political: The raging debate on child marriage and what's really at stake". The New Arab.
  19. ↑ Ali, Zahra (2025). "As an Iraqi and a Feminist, I Stand with the People of Iran and Palestine, Not with their Oppressors". The New Arab.
  20. ↑ "CSRR in the News". Center for Security, Race and Rights, Rutgers University. Retrieved 22 June 2026.
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