I am a historian interested in Islamic West Africa in the Early Modern and Modern period. In particular, I focus on State practices, diplomacy and circulations in Central Sahel, with a special focus on the Borno sultanate from the late medieval to the 19th century. In the past years, I worked on the relation between writing and power in Islamic Africa, and on the relation between migration and technologies related to firearms in the Islamic World.

I received his PhD in African History (2015) from Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne University (IMAf) and won a prize for my PhD thesis (2016) from the Institut sur l’Islam et les Sociétés du Monde Musulman (EHESS). From 2012 to 2021, I was Research Assistant in the ERC Project ConfigMed (Paris 1) and postodoctoral fellow in the EHESS (Centre Alexandre-Koyré), Max Weber Fellow in the European University Institute, and Marie Skłodowska-Curie COFUND fellow at the University of Warwick.

My book, Du lac Tchad à La Mecque. Le sultanat du Borno et son monde (xvie-xviie siècle) (Éditions de la Sorbonne, 2017), provides a new perspective on the functioning of an Islamic Sahelian state in the Early Modern period and its relationship with the world around it through the trans-Saharan routes.

Since this year, I work on migrants and skill-transfer in the Islamic World, from Timbuktu to Java, from the 16th century to the 1850s, in the UKRI project Migration, Adaptation, Innovation: 1500-1800.