Irene Bono

A professor of politics at the University of Turin (Italy), Irene Bono is working on the role of unconventional political action in shaping the nation state in Morocco. She is particularly interested in forms of political participation, modes of government and techniques of violence that arise from economic, cultural and memorial practices. She problematises the notion of sources by combining fieldwork and archival research to approach these subjects and she is actively engaged in the making of digital research archives.

The project

Title: Private archives and spaces of activism: Morocco's years of lead explored on an individual scale

"As an invited researcher of the 2025 DEA Programme at the Institute des Mondes Africains (IMAF), Paris, her project aims at exploring the fields of journalism and finance across Morocco and France as political spaces in which a young nationalist shifted his action during the years of lead, as soon as the repression against the political parties linked to the national movement and their members intensified in Morocco. The project will enable her to delve deeper into a line of research that emerged from her latest monograph Un entrepreneur du national au Maroc'. Ahmed Benkirane: traces et discrétion (Karthala, Paris, 2024), and to further develop the research archive fondsahmedbenkirane.archiui.com. During her stay, she is also keen to expand her scientific discussions on identification of new sources concerning the Years of lead in Morocco through the digitization of private archives."

Hosting institution: The Institute des Mondes Africains (IMAF) in Aubervilliers

Selective Bibliography

• Un entrepreneur du national au Maroc. Ahmed Benkirane, traces et discrétion, Paris: Karthala 2024.
• Souveraineté économique et capitalisme de dissidence au Maroc. Jouer les conflits politiques dans la discrétion, Politique africaine, n. 171-172, 2023, pp. 59-85.
• Rescuing Biography from the Nation: Discrete Perspectives on Political Change in Morocco, in Y. Berriane, A. Derks, A. Kreil, D. Lueddeckens, Methodological Approaches to Societies in Transformation, Palgrave Macmillan, London 2021, pp. 139-163.
• Development as a Battlefield, (eds. with B. Hibou), Leiden: Brill | Nijhoff 2017.
• Le gouvernement du social au Maroc, (eds. with B. Hibou), Paris : Karthala 2016.