Profile
Dhouha Djerbi

Dhouha Djerbi

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Spoken languages
Arabic, English, French, German, Amharic
Areas of expertise
  • Feminist Political Economy
  • Contentious Politics and Social Movements
  • Agrarian change and rural development
  • Ethnographic Methods
Geographical Region of Expertise
  • Tunisia
  • North Africa

PhD Thesis
 

Title: Boundaries of Contention: Gender Mechanisms of Rural Discontent in Post-Uprising Tunisia

Expected Completion Date: 2026

PhD Supervisor & Co-Supervisor : Elisabeth Prugl & Christiana Parreira

How do gendered relations of production and reproduction shape contention? In postrevolutionary Tunisia, conflict over revolutionary aspirations yet to materialize has become a defining feature of the nation’s countryside. In protests, sit-ins, and other displays of discontent, smallholders, agricultural laborers, the landless, and the land poor have taken to the streets to reiterate and assert the demands of a once-revolutionary moment. Amid these campaigns, rural women have occupied vastly different positions. Some have thrown rocks, others were seldom visible, but all have experienced the gender-disparate outcomes of agrarian change that decades of scholarly production have elucidated. What remains undertheorized, however, is how gendered relations of labor feed into discontent. In this dissertation project, I explore gendered labor as a relational mechanism with (1) the potential to elucidate differences in collective action participation (2) and add novel dimensions to our understanding of the grievances animating campaigns. Guided by a social reproductive lens—a theoretical approach centering the interrelations of households, markets, and the state in mediating gendered labor regimes— I argue that the way in which (potential) challengers are positioned vis-à-vis these institutions shapes the way in which they go in and out of claim making; or that gendered structural positioning of challengers generates forces that push people to varying expressions of discontent. 
 

Profile
 

Dhouha Djerbi is a PhD student at the International Relations/Political Science department and an affiliate with the Gender Center. She holds a Master of Public Policy from the Hertie School of Governance (cum laude), a B.A. in Gender, Sexuality, and Society, and Psychology from the American University of Paris (summa cum laude), and a certificate in Research in Political Economy from the International Development Economics Associates. Dhouha is a non-resident research fellow at the Center for Maghreb Studies in Tunis. She is a host for the New Books in Gender Studies series of the New Books Network. 
Dhouha’s research explores gendered labor relations within the context of agrarian transformations and rural movements in postrevolutionary Tunisia. Her research methodology is deeply rooted in ethnographic principles, often involving hands-on experiences working on various farms across diverse regions of Tunisia. Her fieldwork, which she started in the summer of 2023, is funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, l’Institut de Recherche sur Le Maghreb Contemporain, the Project on Middle East Political Science, American Political Science Association (MENA Section), Noria Research, and the European International Studies Association. 
 

RESEARCH INTERESTS
 

  • Rural Politics 
  • Natural resources and conflict
  • Social Reproduction Theories
  • Politics of indebtedness and austerity (IMF-focus)
     

RELEVANT PUBLICATIONS AND WORKS

 

  • Djerbi, Dhouha (forthcoming). “Property and Land Rights” in The Sage International Encyclopedia of Politics and Gender, edited by Lia Roberts.
  • Djerbi, Dhouha. 2024. “The Social Reproductive Roots of Agrarian Contention: Gendered Labor amid Peasant Struggles in Tunisia.” Antipode. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.13081.
  • Djerbi, Dhouha. 2024. “Tunisia’s Amilat: Agrarian Crises and the Feminization of Casual Agricultural Work.” In Gender and Agrarian Transitions: Perspectives on Liberation, edited by Dzodzi Tsikata, Paris Yeros, and Archana Prasad. New Delhi: Tulika Books.
  • Djerbi, Dhouha. 2024. “The Age of Communitarian Enterprises: Rural Women in Kais Saied’s Vision for Alternative Development.” Noria Research: Middle East & North Africa (blog). January 5, 2024. https://noria-research.com/mena/the-age-of-communitarian-enterprises-rural-women-in-kais-saieds-vision-for-alternative-development/.
  • Djerbi, Dhouha. 2023. “Foreign Debt versus Organised Labour: Reflections on the UGTT’s Stance on IMF Loans in Post-Uprising Tunisia.” Review of African Political Economy 0 (0): 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1080/03056244.2023.2251790.
  • Djerbi, Dhouha. 2022. “Syndical and State Engagement with Tunisia’s Amilat: A Collection of Reflections.” ASN Research Bulletin, 1–5. 
  • Meshkal. 2023. Women Working the Land: In Conversation with Dhouha Djerbi Interview by Fadil Aliriza. https://meshkal.org/women-working-the-land-tunisia/.
     

Fellowships, Grant and Awards

 

  • Field Grant, Project on Middle East Political Science. 
  • Short-term fieldwork grant from l'Institut de Recherche sur le Maghreb Contemporain (July - August 2023)
  • Carnegie Corporation of New York and Center for Maghreb Studies in Tunis fellow on the 'Maghrib from the Peripheries Project' (2022 - 2024)
     

OTHER WORK EXPERIENCES
 

  • Gender Advisor to the German Office to the African Union in Addis Ababa (2021-2022) 
  • Intern for the Water Integrity Network (2020-2021)
     

AFILIATIONS
 

  • Gender Center
  • Center for Maghreb Studies in Tunis (CEMAT) 
  • Tunisian Observatory for Food Sovereignty and the Environment
     

LINKS