Dr Anna Grasso BA (Hons), MA (Université Aix-Marseille), MA (Sciences Po Aix), PhD

Dr Grasso received her doctorate from Sciences Po Aix in January 2018 entitled “Imams in the city: Politicisation and unionisation of Imams in contemporary Tunisia”. Her doctoral research was funded (2012-2015) by the Aix-Marseille University (as a contractual PhD student). Her PhD thesis in Political Science under the supervision of Prof. Franck Fregosi, focused on understanding the evolution of Islam’s institutional and political place in Tunisia through the figure of clerics who have been mobilising since the January 14th, 2011 revolution.

This research was based on qualitative data analysis (interviews with political and religious representatives), which she conducted during numerous fieldwork trips to Tunisia between 2012 and 2017. The results of her PhD have already led to peer-reviewed publications in both English and French. Thanks to her research and teaching experience she has been approved by the French National Council of Universities in Political Science (CNU 04).

During her doctoral research project, she was able to attend various international conferences where she had the opportunity to present her work. On one of these occasions (the BISA@40 Workshop “Protest, Social Movements, and Global Democracy since 2011” which took place in June 2015 in London, United Kingdom) she had the chance to meet Professor Marco Giugni, director of the Institute of Citizenship Studies of the University of Geneva. Given her research interests, he offered her the opportunity to collaborate on the project “Public Deliberation, Network Analysis and the Political Inclusion of Muslims Living in Switzerland, France and Britain” funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. In this role, she carried out recorded interviews using a questionnaire with both open-ended and closed answer structure with representatives of Muslim associations in the city of Nice and its surroundings.

More recently, between November 2020 and September 2022, she co-directed a research project financed by the Central Bureau of Worship (affiliated with the French Ministry of the Interior) entitled “When women inhabit the mosque”. They received a €60,000 grant to carry out a study on the place and role of women (Muslim-born and converts) in mosques (classic and inclusive) in France (Marseille, Strasbourg, Paris) concerning the issue of inclusivity and gender equality. They focused on the issues of space, authority, roles, mass media and online presence.

To tackle this research, they conducted participant observation as well as qualitative interviews with different types of actors (male and female imams, female preachers, female lecturers, mosque architects, Muslim association presidents, secretaries, female converts, etc.) As their research took place partly during the Covid health crisis, they also focused on the online presence of male and female imams. For instance: one of the inclusive mosques they studied chose to organise their prayers on Zoom, another inclusive mosque set up religion courses (dars) on Facebook Live, and an inclusive imam offered imam training courses on Facebook rooms. Moreover, two of the classic mosques they targeted in the cities of Strasbourg and Marseille had an important online presence, especially on Instagram. This allowed the two young imams to attract many young male and female worshippers.

• Religion and public policy
• Religious authorities in contemporary Islam
• Islam and politics
• Sociology of religion
• Arab Spring
• Trade Unionism
• Tunisia
• Gender and Islam
• Islam Online

• (2021), « L’utilisation de la ressource religieuse par un parti « laïque » dans la Tunisie de l’après-révolution » [The use of religion as a resource by a “secular” party in post-revolutionary Tunisia], Revue internationale de politique comparée, 28, 111–134. ;
• (2021), “Religious freedom and secularism in postrevolutionary Tunisia”, Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion, 12, 59-82;
• (2020), « L’intégration politique des islamistes tunisiens via les syndicats », L’Année du Maghreb, 22, 185-201;
• (2018), « Le contrôle public des mosquées après 2011 : vers une nouvelle politique religieuse de l’État tunisien ? » [The public control of mosques after 2011 : towards a new religious policy of the Tunisian State ?] in Amin Allal & Vincent Geisser (dir.), Tunisie : Une démocratisation au-dessous de tout soupçon ? [Tunisia: A democratisation beyond any doubt?], Paris, CNRS Editions.
• (2016), “Religion and Political Activism in Post-Revolutionary Tunisia”, Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, 39, 197–220.]