Mounira Charrad

Mounira M. Charrad is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin, a position she has held since 2005, following her prior role as Assistant Professor there from 2000 to 2005. She earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from Harvard University with distinction on the qualifying exam, a Diploma in Advanced Studies (equivalent to M.A.) in Sociology from the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris, France, and a Licence (equivalent to B.A.) in Sociology with high honors from the Sorbonne, University of Paris, France. Her distinguished career also includes serving as Assistant Professor at the University of California, San Diego from 1983 to 1990, Visiting Scholar at Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies from 1999 to 2000, Senior Research Associate and Mellon Fellow at the University of Pittsburgh from 1992 to 1999, Research Associate at Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies from 1990 to 1991, and visiting positions at Brown University and Harvard University.

Charrad's research specializations include gender and women's rights, political sociology, social theory, colonialism, comparative-historical sociology, globalization, and the Middle East and North Africa. She holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Middle East Studies and affiliations with the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Center for Women's and Gender Studies, Center for European Studies, Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice, Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, and Center for Global Business at UT Austin, as well as a Non-resident Fellowship at Rice University's Baker Institute since 2014. Her landmark book, States and Women's Rights: The Making of Postcolonial Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco (University of California Press, 2001), received the American Sociological Association's Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award for Best Book in Sociology, Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Award from the Political Sociology Section, American Political Science Association's Greenstone Award for Best Book on Politics and History, UT Austin's Hamilton Award for Outstanding Scholarly Book, and Phi Alpha Theta's Best First Book in History Award, among others; it has been translated into Arabic and Chinese. She co-edited Women Rising: In and Beyond the Arab Spring (New York University Press, 2020) and authored highly cited works such as "Gender in the Middle East: Islam, State, Agency" (Annual Review of Sociology, 2011, 277 citations), "Women's Agency Across Cultures" (Women's Studies International Forum, 2010, 168 citations), and recent articles on family law reforms in Tunisia and Morocco. Charrad's scholarship has profoundly influenced political sociology and gender studies in postcolonial contexts.

Professional Email: charrad@utexas.edu