Henry Laurens

Henry Laurens (born 1954) is a French historian and author of several histories and studies about the Arab-Muslim world.

He is Professor and Chair of History of the Contemporary Arab world at the Collège de France, Paris.

Laurens earned his degree of Arab civilization from the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations (INALCO) in Paris.

From 1981 to 1983, he studied and taught abroad in Damascus and Cairo.

From 1981 to 1982, Henry Laurens was Scholarship student at the French Institute of Arab Studies in Damascus and from 1982 to 1983, he was French lecturer at Cairo University.

From 1983 to 1990, he was assistant professor in contemporary history at the Paris-Sorbonne University.

He was awarded his doctorate, with high distinction, in 1989 at the Sorbonne–Paris IV, with a thesis on The French Revolution and Islam : History and Meanings of the Egyptian Expedition, 1798-1801.

Professor of Late modern period at Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales from 1991 to 2001, Henry Laurens is also the director of the Mediterranean Studies doctoral training there from 1992 to 1995 and the director of the North Africa Middle East department from 1992 to 1994.

A member of the French National Centre for Scientific Research since 1991, of the Scientific Commission for Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs since 2011 and of the board of directors of the Sciences Po since 2016, he is also on the editorial board of the journal Maghreb-Machrek.

He has been a professor at the Collège de France since 2003.

Laurens specializes in several related areas of research: European-Ottoman contacts in the 19th century, Franco-Arab relations, Middle-Eastern politics, European thought in the 18th and 19th centuries and the history of modern Palestine.