“Domestic Archives of Displacement: Memory, Language, and Informal Bookmaking among Armenian and Palestinian Populations and Women in Lebanon”
Research area 1: Displacements, “Dépaysements” and Discrepancies: People, Knowledge and Practices
Ali Al Moussaoui holds a PhD in Cognitive Sciences of Language from the University of Nova Gorica (UNG), Slovenia. His research interests span bilingualism, pragmatics, psycholinguistics, language consciousness and identity, language politics, analysis of language situations, language adaptation processes, heritage language, code switching, discourse analysis, translation, and applied linguistics.
At the Centre français de recherche en sciences sociales (CEFRES), he plans to conduct a research project entitled Domestic Archives of Displacement: Memory, Language, and Informal Bookmaking among Armenian and Palestinian Populations and Women in Lebanon. The research relates to the trends of memory, diaspora, feminism, and informal bookmaking practiced by marginalized communities in Lebanon, namely Palestinian and Armenian populations, and especially women. The aim is to unearth the ways in which the aforementioned practices act as effective tools in memory-making, expressing identity, and resisting social and cultural difficulties. The research will shed light on the narratives, languages used, and different forms of informal dissemination of information being utilized by the two communities to record their stories and cascade their experiences. The research will utilize a multi-method qualitative approach which combines ethnographic fieldwork with textual, visual, and discourse analysis.
This research is conducted within a broader project titled “Paper Bonds: Bookmaking for Kin, Friends and Self in Contemporary Europe and the Middle East,” itself embedded in the TANDEM program, a collaboration between CEFRES, the French National Research Center (CNRS), the Czech Academy of Sciences (AV ČR), and Charles University (UK). As one of the project’s three researchers, Dr. Al Moussaoui will be working alongside Dr. Giedrė Šabasevičiūtė and Dr. Hélène Martinelli to explore how bookmaking practices and non-commercial publishing shape relationships, express identity, and respond to political and technological change.
CV
Academic Qualifications
2021: PhD in Cognitive Sciences of Language, University of Nova Gorica, Slovenia. Thesis: Theoretical and Experimental Aspects of Numerosity and Quantification in Lebanese Arabic. Final Average: 90.01
2016: Master’s in English Linguistics, Lebanese University. Thesis: The Effect of Collocational Input on Linguistic Awareness and Proficiency in Writing in UAE
2008: Bachelor’s in English Language and Literature, Lebanese University, 2008
2022: Certificat d’Aptitude à la Profession de Médiateur, Ecole Professionnelle de la Médiation et de la Négociation (EPMN) Paris, France & Université Saint Joseph (USJ), Lebanon
Training: Focused on facilitating communication and building trust within domestic and informal spheres, in line with the “kitchen politics” theme
Professional Experience
2023- 2025: University Instructor, American University of Culture and Education (AUCE), Lebanon: diverse courses including Cognitive Development, Approaches to Research, Translation of the Community, and Translation of Cultural Texts/ supervision of student research on identity, language, and cultural exchange/ integrated discussions and workshops on literacy practices within the digital age versus material culture.
2022- 2025: Professional Mediator & Facilitator, Centre Professionnelle de la Médiation (CPM), Université Saint Joseph (USJ), Lebanon: formal training in mediation theory and practice, with a focus on ethical facilitation, conflict-sensitive communication, and trust building in domestic, community, and informal institutional settings/ application of mediation principles to qualitative research contexts, including fieldwork, in-depth interviewing, and engagement with marginalized and displacement-affected communities/experience in facilitating dialogue around sensitive sociocultural issues such as identity, language, gender, memory, and social vulnerability/ competence in managing interpersonal dynamics and asymmetries of power, supporting reflexive and ethically grounded research practices.
2021-2025: Project Manager & Communications Officer, Lebanese Organization for Studies and Training (LOST), Lebanon: cross-sectoral projects focusing on displacement, identity, and cultural resilience in Lebanon/ communications highlighting issues of feminism, migration, and cultural erasure within local and refugee communities/ outreach materials and partnerships addressing refugee education and empowerment/ trust-based communities and the sociology of literature.
2022: Freelance Translator, Cultural & Artistic Texts, Al Tashkeel Magazine, United Arab Emirates: translating a variety of non commercial and specialized texts including art criticism, cultural commentary, and literary works between Arabic and English/ engaging with the nuances of linguistic and cultural expression/ addressing the challenges of cultural erasure and preserving local narratives/ working closely with individual authors and small cultural organizations to gain insight into non-commercial publishing and the symbolic dimensions of text creation.
2008- 2015: English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Instructor, International High Schools, United Arab Emirates: delivering extensive EFL instruction/ conducting applied research on the acquisition and use of collocations and their relevance to linguistic awareness, identity formation, and the potential impact of cultural erasure in a multilingual context (research formed the basis of Master’s thesis)/ designing curriculum materials that addressed real-world communication needs, fostering an understanding of cross-cultural communication and the symbolic dimensions of language.
Conferences, Workshops, & Training
• July 2021: The 4th Experimental Pragmatics in Italy Conference (XPRAG.it) – University of Turin, Italy. The anti-duality inference: Implications for cross-linguistic variation and L2 learning (Co-presentation with Prof. Dr. Penka Stateva)
• November 2019: The 12th Mediterranean Morphology Meeting (MMM 12) – University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia. Poster presentation of a psycholinguistics experiment: The Facilitatory Effect of Phonological Priming on Visual Word Recognition in Arabic: Speed and Overlapping Positions.
• May 2021: Dynamic Syntax course – University of Bergen, Norway (online)
• May 2021: Psycholinguistics in Flanders 2021 Conference (PiF) Technische Universität Kaiserslautern, Germany (online)
• May 2021: Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 31 – Linguistic Society of America, Brown University, USA (online)
• March 2021: 34th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing – University of Pennsylvania, USA (online)
• March 2020: Foundations in Literacy- Orton Gillingham Learning Centre (REACH), Lebanon
• August 2019: Research Methods in Corpus Linguistics & Computational Linguistics- Frankfurt Summer School, Goethe University, Germany
• October 2017: European Dyslexia Association (EDA) Seminar, Munich, Germany Publications
• Al Moussaoui, A., & Stepanov, A. (2020). When a Wh-Word Refuses to Stay in Situ. Linguistic Inquiry. https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/full/10.1162/ling_a_00345
• Al Moussaoui, A. (2022). Expanding the Mediation Lexicon in Arabic. USJ Repository
• Al Moussaoui, A., & Zekri, W. (2024). Algerian Teachers’ Motivation and Self-efficacy Towards Online Teaching. Electronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching, 21(1), 55 73. https://e-flt.nus.edu.sg/v21n12024/zekri.pdf
Languages
• Arabic: Native
• English: C2 (Proficient)
• French: B2 (Upper Intermediate)
• Persian: B2 (Upper Intermediate)
• German: A2 (Elementary)
• Italian: A2 (Elementary)
