Scientific event

What paths did the little girl from an atypical family of immigrants take to get here? Known for her work on the contemporary history of Algeria, Malika Rahal offers a deeply personal text in which the living and the dead of her own story intertwine with those from her research.
Throughout these pages, where anger and urgency in the face of colonisation and war emerge, the challenges of transmitting culture and memory shape a vibrant narrative attentive to the details of everyday places and objects. When she opens her kitchen spice cupboard, listens to her parents' vinyl records, or looks at family photos, she does so as a historian: she draws connections to her practice as a teacher and researcher, questions her relationship with witnesses and their accounts, and explores her commitments.
Her book is a powerful reflection on writing the history of the present, "even in the midst of war."
Born in 1974, Malika Rahal holds a doctorate and agrégation in history and is a director of research at the CNRS. Since January 2022, she has directed the Institut d'histoire du temps présent (IHTP). She is the author of Ali Boumendjel, une affaire française. Une histoire Algérienne (Belles Lettres and Barzakh, 2011) and of the work based on her doctoral thesis, L'UDMA et les Udmistes, Contribution à l'histoire du nationalisme algérien (Barzakh, 2017). In 2022, she published Algérie 1962, une histoire populaire (La Découverte and Barzakh), which received both critical and public acclaim.