Imen Neffati, Ph.D.

I completed a PhD in History at the University of Sheffield (UK) in 2020, where I looked at the history of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and its predecessor Hara Kiri, from 1960 to 2015. I have also just about finished a Junior Research Fellowship at Pembroke College, the University of Oxford. I am interested in the history of the press and media in France in general, and I have published on free speech laws in France, on laïcité, islamophobia and antisemitism, and on women in the satirical press.
I am currently writing my first monograph, where I examine Charlie Hebdo within the wider context of French culture, politics, and society. While in my thesis I maninly focused on the question of anticléricalisme and Islamophobia, in the book I tease out a story of shifts and changes in a sub-section of the French left from the 1960s to the present day. I focus on humour, political cartoons and their caricaturists, and the editorial decisions that make a low-circulation marginal yet influential satirical publication.