A historian and directrice d'études emerita at the EHESS, Lucette Valensi (born in Tunis in 1936) is a specialist in the social and cultural history of the Mediterranean Islamic world and the pre-colonial Maghreb. She directed the Centre de recherches historiques (1992–1996) and founded the Institut d'études de l'islam et des sociétés du monde musulman. Her books include Fellahs tunisiens (Tunisian Peasants in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries; Mouton, 1977), Le Maghreb avant la prise d'Alger (On the Eve of Colonialism: North Africa Before the French Conquest; Flammarion, 1969), Mémoires juives (Jewish Memories; with Nathan Wachtel, Gallimard, 1986), Fables de la mémoire (Fables of Memory; Seuil, 1992), and Ces étrangers familiers : Musulmans en Europe (XVIe-XVIIIe siècles) (These Familiar Strangers: Muslims in Europe, 16th–18th Centuries; Payot, 2012).
