Moutaa Amine El Waer

Moutaa Amine El Waer did his PhD in sociology at the Université de Montréal. During his doctoral studies, he taught the Methodology of Qualitative Research in the Social Sciences from 2021 to 2023. Since September 2024, he has been teaching courses on collective action, political sociology, and an introduction to Arab-majority societies in the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto. Additionally, he teaches a seminar on decolonizing research in the social sciences and another on community organizing and global solidarity in the Critical Studies in Equity and Solidarity program at New College, University of Toronto.

His research focuses on social movements, particularly the student movement and its relationships with political parties and authorities, as well as organizational issues, the daily work of organizing, and political and social engagement. His doctoral thesis examines the transformations of student activism in Tunisia within a revolutionary context. He explores how the Tunisian revolution of December 2010 disrupted the student movement, previously the primary space for political socialization in the country. This upheaval brought about significant changes within the movement itself, including shifts in recruitment, organization, daily practices, and discourse. It also had a lasting impact on the student movement’s organic ties with political parties (both leftist and Islamist) and its long-standing antagonistic relationship with the pre-revolutionary authorities, which had endured for over fifty years.
 

Recent Publications

- Moutaa Amine El Waer & Sonya Ben Yahmed (2021),“Manīsh msāmiḥ: An Array of Tunisian Lifeworlds in 2016”, Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies, 21(3), https://doi.org/10.5617/jais.9515

- Moutaa Amine El Waer (2021), “Significant Sociological Characteristics in Student Militancy During the Last Decade of Ben Ali's Regime”, Idafat Arab review of sociology, n°53-54, 64-87. (in Arabic)

- Moutaa Amine El Waer (2020), “Displacing indigenous knowledge : the Tunisian Student Movement”, African Review of Political Economy Blog, 2020: http://roape.net/2020/02/27/displacing-indigenous-knowledge-the-tunisian-student-movement/

- Moutaa Amine El Waer (2019), “Some representations of the student movement since 68. Moutaa Amine El Waer, In Hicham Abdessamad (Ed.), Sixty-eight in Tunisia. The myth and the heritage, Tunis, Ed. Mots Passants, 119‑154. (in Arabic & French)

- Moutaa Amine El Waer (2018), “The Tunisien Mars 1968”, Moutaa Amine El Waer In Béatrice Hibou (Ed.). Look Further Than May : Student Movements in the world in 1968. Publication of Science Po Paris Library: (in French)
http://dossiers-bibliotheque.sciencespo.fr/voir-plus-loin-que-mai-les-mouvements-etudiants-dans-le-monde-en-1968/mars-68-et-le-non-mai-68

- Moutaa Amine El Waer (2017), “Black People of the Gahbaya Neighborhood in Gabes: Methodical Racism and Difficult Resistance”, Moutaa Amine El Waer, In Melliti I. (Ed.), Being black is Not a Question of Color. Survey Reports: Representations of Racism Among Black People in Tunisia, Tunis, Ed. Nirvana, 13‑41. (in French)