Our knowledge of the geography of Ethiopia is marked by especially rich and ancient political and cultural history, ethnic diversity and a very rich corpus of historical and cultural source material. These include centuries-old local written works and oral traditions in the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia and neighboring Muslim polities. From the 19th century, the production of academic knowledge on Ethiopia and other territories of northeastern Africa include many maps and topographic information produced by foreign researchers and co-produced by anonymous local informants, such as traditional scholars, merchants and office holders of Christian Ethiopia and even in some cases of several neighboring kingdoms, disappeared today. However, the absence of compendium of maps has led to a fundamental ignorance of their potential resources of information for studies of the country and its region. The members of the French-German team, in close association with Ethiopian partners, have accumulated a lot of experience in fieldwork research in central or peripheral areas of the modern state structures, combined with many years of work in archives and extensive teaching experience in Ethiopian universities. Their common observation is that there is an urgent need for a geo-historical instrument and reference work which can help to study and understand the meaning of maps: the epistemic operations behind the inscription of toponyms and ethnonyms; the evolution of spatial representations; the roots of territorial claims; the sustainability of collective memory; and the power of social imaginations to adapt to changing landscapes. We believe that this research will result in invaluable tools for accessing to the information contained in historical maps and for taking into consideration in other fields of study the evolution of map-making technologies which have shaped the representations of space that are still fundamental in the current social and political activities involving territorial issues. The objectives of the ETHIOMAP project are twofold: 1. Collection, critical analysis and indexation of historical cartographic sources: The project will collect, critically describe, analyze, index and publish a documentation of widely unknown, but historically important maps of Ethiopia and neighboring countries of northeastern Africa. The scope of the research is limited to maps that were designed between 1790 and 1944, each of them representing a specific historical period and constituting excellent ethnographic or historical sources that have been neglected by the general trend of studies on this area of the world. A selection of 25 maps will be fully indexed and made accessible through an on-line map-viewer application. This will be linked to a scholarly blog of the project through which short critical notes presenting the maps of the corpus will be published as the research advances. More elaborated articles will be proposed to international journals. Other dissemination activities will include seminars in Ethiopian universities to advertise the outcome of the project to the local communities of researchers. 2. focused fieldwork surveys: This work on historical cartographic and topographic sources will be supplemented by targeted fieldwork investigations on contemporary territories. Selected areas of the most informative maps of the corpus will be compared to the corresponding territories in current-day Ethiopia. Through four focused surveys, we first expect to reach a better understanding of the work of map-makers by returning on their footsteps and by experimenting the current conditions of collecting spatial information from local populations. Direct observation of places and landscapes cannot be substituted by the available cartographic materials and new technologies. The other objective of these surveys is to describe processes of continuity and transformations in spatial organizations, by collecting information on local realities.

In Morocco, like elsewhere, the transmission of knowledge (‘ilm) in Islam is a major element in understanding this religion. It contributes to the elaboration of doctrines, standards, and “tradition”. This resulted, therefore, in the introduction of competing orthodoxies in the confined space of madrasa, in within the group of clerics (ulema, Sufi Masters, Imams, etc.), in intersection with the power and society. Studying the transmission of knowledge sheds light on modes of inscription of religion in society, its link with the economy, and its relation to politics. International relations also are involved: since the clerics’ peregrinations in their quest for knowledge (talab al-‘ilm) until today’s transnationalism, the teaching of Islam is rooted deeply in the local context, whether rural or urban, while projecting in a broader community of believers (umma) currently globalized. After the observations of colonial administrators and orientalists, and then the referential works on classical forms of education in Islam, a renewed attention was brought about in the 2000s; yet the Maghreb, Morocco in particular, has been neglected. The ILM project aims to address this gap in a time when teaching of Islam in Europe, and in other immigration countries alike, turns out to be a crucial issue. The program’s main objective is to explore the field of teaching Islam in Morocco since the 18th century, starting from learning the Quran by “simple believers” to the training of clerics and religious personnel. We will cross disciplines and periods, combine Islamic studies / philology and social sciences (History, Geography, Anthropology, Sociology, and Political Science). We also will brought together Moroccan and international scholars in a fruitful and thought-provoking exchange so that to open up this field of research. The teaching of Islam covers here very diverse realities -especially as the approach is both diachronic and synchronic- that only a research program of such magnitude, involving thirty participants, can come to grasp them. The ambition is chiefly to renew knowledge by updating new sources and conducting investigations into unfamiliar fields. The project will question, first, the religious knowledge itself to determine how all its forms, including Sufi teaching, Islamic religious sciences, Humanities, encyclopedic knowledge, etc., are articulated. The second theme will focus on the conditions and terms through which this knowledge is transmitted: surveys will be conducted, in various regions, on traditional schools (madrasa ‘atîqa, mhadara) as well as on the major centers of knowledge, then on modern universities, but also on Sufi brotherhoods, religious associations and movements. The third theme will deal with the secularization of knowledge and its teaching which began, in Morocco, under the protectorate, boosted by the colonial state but also by the Moroccan nationalists, and continued after 1956. The independent State set up a disposition organizing the religious education, in line with its needs, which has been served as a tool for the exercise of power and fits into its public policies as a ‘soft power’ towards outside. The fourth theme has to do with Moroccan State as a producer and exporter of knowledge, but also as a receiver of imported knowledge. Despite the discourse praising the “Moroccan model”, as a Sufi-Maliki-tolerant Islam, there are other offers which are conveying competing orthodoxies. Since 18th century to the present, Morocco has received influences from the Orient (Wahhabism, “Salafism”), and this matter will be brought under light, documented and discussed. In documenting this project, three corpuses of texts will be published: an anthology of texts in French from the colonial period; an anthology of Arabic texts written by actors in educational reform; and manuscripts in Arabic script.

The aim of this research project is to study religious rigorism and radicalization, in an interdisciplinary approach. The research skills of the team are pluri-disciplinary (sociology, visual anthropology, political sciences, psychology, Islamic studies and Arabic language). Our originality is to investigate how religious intensity, rigorism and (in)transigence, by analyzing life trajectories, modes of socialization as well as religious and non religious discourses. While refuting particularist and a fortiori pathological interpretation of these phenomena, we will analyze the individual and collective dynamics, in order to distinguish specific itinerary and reveal both differences and similarities between radicalism and rigorism. The project includes nine tasks, which are in strong interaction. The first four tasks mainly concern sociological analysis. First, an ethnographic fieldwork will be carried out in an organization involved in theprevention of radicalization. Collecting life course components as well as elements of evaluation will contribute to the definition effort of radicalization and religious rigorism. In addition, an interview survey on veiling and unveiling careers will allow to know more about the evolution of religiosities, especially intensive or rigorist ones. In the third taskwe will analyze written testimonies (mostly books) of rigorist and radical trajectories and their way out. The fourth task will investigate how the main (French) Muslim medias, Muslim organization and Muslim personalities (when invited by generalist medias) deal with rigorism and radicalization. Two tasks are concerned with film analysis, in conjunction with sociological and political analysis. The link between propaganda video emanating of jihadist organizations (or their publicists) and the radicalization processes will be analyzed. We will analyze their grammars and their effects while investigating which religious and political ressources are mobilized. Two tasks mainly concern psychological analysis: how does religious motives fit into life trajectories of young persons in difficulty or becoming violent extremists? What role does it play in psychological processes and in the way towards violent action? We will also investigate the self-image of the reported / radicalized person, with the aim of defining psychological profiles and to highlight subjective factors explaining the pull factors for some persons to a violent extremism linked to Islam. Finally the last task will be centered on the specific issues concerning social workers: how do they deal with the « religiousissue» and how does the detection of radicalization question their professional identity? We will develop theoretical tools in order to distinctly think radicalization and rigorism. While our approaches are innovative in each of our discipline, they will also be articulated throughout the project (each empirical fieldwork will be discussed with colleagues of the other disciplines), which will allow elaborating a theoretical framework and analytical tools for characterizing and distinguishing phenomena. The generated knowledge will be communicated at three levels: seminaries, workshops, conferences; articles in scientific, professional and mainstream journals/medias; professional and academic teaching. Being members of ESTES (social work school in Strasbourg), of EHESS Paris and of sociology and psychology faculties of Strasbourg University, we will develop specific pedagogic tools for sociologists, psychologists and social work. Finally, our results will be disseminated to a large public of professionals and civil society actors.

Since the uprising and the war that followed, the knowledge produced on Syria came mostly from experts and journalists than from the academic field. If social scientists keep on publishing despite the impossibility to go to Syria, they are often prompted to provide studies framed for international or national decision makers. As a result, they have to handle a double challenge: to pursue their research according to their proper pace and approach as well as to invent new methods to invest the Syrian fieldwork. How to conducting research on a society scattered by war and under constant transformations ? How to figure out phenomenons of brutal dislocation of familiar spaces and social relationships ? How to chart extreme violence and trauma ? Analyzing the upheavals shaking Syria since 2011 raises epistemological, ethical and reflexive issues, as the commitment of the researcher has become unavoidable. The SHAKK's team is willing to tackle these different challenges according to a multidisciplinary and comparative perspective. It will associate the Center for Religious Social Sciences studies (Césor/EHESS), the French Institute in the Near East (Ifpo) and the audiovisual department of the French National Library (BNF). This team is composed of nine researchers – anthropologists, political scientists, historians and linguists- as well as a research engineer, Arabist, a specialist of digital humanities and a curator, specialist of audiovisual archives and will also associate exiled Syrian students. Indeed, the pooling of scientific and technical skills is essential to carry out the different aspects of our project. Our first ambition is to come back to the origins of the revolt and to the various stages of its transformation into a military conflict, closely scrutinizing actors, trajectories, actions and narratives. Paying special attention to moments and places, we will examine political, religious, social, territorial and memorial reconfigurations proper to this context of uncertainty (Shakk in Arabic) and extreme violence. We will focus on relationships that are broken, suspended and renewed by the uprising and the subsequent war through the notions of displacement and indetermination. Displacement and indetermination of centers of power, of identities, of frontiers, of religion and politics as well of categories, methods and paradigms. We believe that these two notions are particularly relevant to grasp this in-between temporality made of ruptures, disorders and conflicts, proper to war. Our team also wishes to develop an in-depth reflection on methods of inquiry: we will conduct our researches outside Syria while seeking to narrow the geographical distance imposed by war. Fieldwork will be carried out in bordering countries (Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan) and in Europe (France, Germany and Sweden). We will also proceed to online interviews with people inside Syria via Messenger, WhatsApp and Skype. Furthermore, and that's where lies the originality of our approach, we will investigate the digital space and more specifically, the huge amount of videos uploaded on YouTube by the different protagonists of the revolt and of the war. This vast digital territory will be considered as a site of inquiry for which we will elaborate specific tools for collect and analysis. In addition, these online videos will also be investigated from an archive perspective and the making of a vernacular memory of the events. Finally, we hope to contribute to the emergence a new generation of Syrian researchers who are exiled in Europe.