Biography
Ahmed’s dissertation research focuses on social memory formation in the context of a contemporary political protest movement in Algeria known as the Hirak (2019-ongoing). He asks: How does social memory formation in the Hirak act as a challenge to dominant historiographical narratives- often legacies of colonial, post- Enlightenment models of historicism- that are superimposed by the nation-state. More importantly, what potentials does the conceptual space opened up by the Hirak offer in terms of a rethinking of the past and thus new epistemological possibilities and political futures? He seeks to accomplish this by tracing an ethnographic account of the memories of the Algerian past-- namely, the Algerian Revolution against French colonialism between 1954 and 1962, and the Black Decade of 1992 to 2002, through the social life of the Hirak.
