François Burgat, scholar, is Senior Research Fellow (Emeritus) at the French National Centre for Scientific Research. He has been at the University of Constantine, Algeria (1973-1980), at the CEDEJ in Cairo (1989-1993), then as the director of the French Centre for Archaeology and Social Sciences in Sana’a, Yemen (1997-2003), at the IREMAM in Aix-en-Provence (2003-2008) and the director of the French Institute for the Near East, first Damascus then Beirut, (2008-2013). He was project investigator of the European Council program WAFAW (2013-2017) and he is a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of The Islamic Movement in North Africa (1997); Face to Face with Political Islam (2002); Islamism in the shadow of al-Qaeda (2008); Comprendre l’Islam politique: une trajectoire sur l’altérité islamiste 1973-2016 (2016).