Hanan Natour is a German-Palestinian Postdoctoral Researcher of Arabic and Comparative Literature at EXC 2020 and an Associated Fellow of the programme "Europe in the Middle East — The Middle East in Europe (EUME)" at Forum Transregionale Studien in Berlin. She obtained her PhD in Arabic and Literary Studies with a thesis on Narratives of Liberation, Emancipation, and Decoloniality in Tunisian Arabic Prose (1987–2017) (Freie Universität Berlin, 2024, summa cum laude). Together with Prof. Mohamed-Salah Omri (University of Oxford) she co-edits the first English-language volume devoted to the varieties of modern Tunisian literatures (forthcoming). Throughout four years of her PhD at the Department of Arabic and the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies, she served as Research Associate for the ERC-funded project PalREAD – The Reading and Reception of Palestinian Literature from 1948 to the Present.

Hanan holds an MPhil in Modern Middle Eastern Studies (University of Oxford, 2018) and a BA in Arabic and German Literature (University of Göttingen, 2016, distinction), including a year of studying abroad at Paris-Sorbonne University. Her studies received funding by the Foundation of German Business (sdw), the Einstein Foundation, the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes) and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). She acquired further third-party funding as a Dahlem Junior Host and as a scholar of the Berlin University Alliance (BUA)'s Oxford-Berlin Research Partnership (2022). Hanan has been selected for BUA's tenure-track mentorship programme for women in academia "PROFIL" (2025–26).

Orcid: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-3889-6058

Academia.edu: https://fu-berlin.academia.edu/HananNatour

LinkedIn: https://de.linkedin.com/in/hanan-natour-143452157

ERC-project Country of Words: https://www.geschkult.fu-berlin.de/en/e/palread/index.html

Dahlem Junior Host Project: https://www.fu-berlin.de/sites/dhc/programme/termine/_Termin-Archiv/Workshops/Workshop-Hanan-Natour.html

EUME-Profile: https://www.eume-berlin.de/fellows/vita/20242025/hanan-natour

Teaching

• MA-Course “Narratives of Revolt in the Middle East & North Africa”, Department of Arabic and Semitic Studies, Freie Universität Berlin (Winter Term 2025/26)
• BA-Course “Literature & Revolution in the Postcolonial Maghreb”, Department of World literature, University of Göttingen (Winter Term 2025/26)
• Postdoctoral International Colloquium, Research Area 3 “Future Perfect”, Cluster of Excellence “Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective” (2025-2026)
• Guest Lecture “Narrative der Freiheit, Emanzipation und Dekolonialität in der tunesischen arabischen Gegenwartsprosa”, Course “Frauen und Gender in der arabischen Literatur”, Freie Universität Berlin (Summer Term 2025)
• Guest Lecture “Liberation, Emancipation, and Decoloniality in Modern Tunisian Fiction”, Orient-Symposium Göttingen & World Literature Program, University of Göttingen (Summer Term 2025)
• Doctoral Reading Group “Epistemologies of the Global South”, Friedrich-Schlegel-Graduate School of Literary Studies (Winter Term 2019/2020)
• Weekly tutorial of Arabic Grammar for BA students at the Department of Arabic, University of Göttingen, Germany (Winter Term 2015/16)
• Weekly tutorial of Medieval German for BA students at the Department of German Philology, University of Göttingen, Germany (Winter Term 2013/14)

Supervision 

• MA-Thesis on modern Tunisian fiction (2025)
• BA-Thesis on Fatima Mernissi und Nawal El Saadawi (2025)
• BA-Thesis on Arab Diasporic Writing (2025)

Postdoctoral Research Project:

Competing Temporalities in Decolonial North African Fiction (2024–)

Research Interests:

• Modern Tunisian literatures in Arabic and French
• Intertextuality across pre-modern and modern periods
• Temporality & historicism in decolonial contexts
• Postcolonial Maghreb
• Speculative literature
• Popular uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa
• Literature & resistance
• Palestinian literature

Presentations:

“Lamenting Loss & Claiming a Voice: Interpretations of rithāʾ by Women Writers in North Africa” delivered at the 35^th “Deutsche Orientalistentag” (DOT) (09/2025)

“Literary Longings for Palestine in Times of Destruction - Perspectives from the Maghreb” to be delivered at the Annual Conference “Destruction, Loss, and Recovery in the Middle East”, British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) (07/2025)

“Literary Networks between Beirut, Tunis, and Paris” to be delivered at the conference “Futures of Doing Literature”, Cluster of Excellence “Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective” (07/2025)

“Cities and the Construction of Memory in the Novels of Tunisian Women Writers” to be delivered at the MECAM workshop “Cities in the Arab Imagination: Fiction, Reality, and Futurescapes”, Tunis (06/2025)

“Liberation, Emancipation, and Decoloniality in Modern Tunisian Fiction” to be delivered at “Göttinger Orient Symposium,” in collaboration with the programme “Weltliteratur”, University of Göttingen (05/2025)

"In Search of the Tunisian Political Novel in Arabic" delivered at the 58th Annual Meeting of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) (11/2024)

"Between Maghreb and Mashriq: Resonances of Pre-Modern Concepts of the Mediterranean in Tunisian Arabic Prose of the 21st Century" delivered at the conference "A Decolonial Mediterranean? Disparities, Imaginations, Power Relations" of the Merian Center for Advanced Studies in the Maghreb in Tunis (MECAM) (11/2024)

"Narratives of Liberation, Emancipation, and Decoloniality in Tunisian Women’s Writings" delivered at the 30th International Congress of Deutsche Arbeitsgemeinschaft Vorderer Orient (DAVO) (09/2024)

"Tunis and Beyond: Power, Access, and Representation in the Tunisian Arabic Novel" delivered at the MECAM workshop "Cities in the Arab Imagination: Fiction, Reality, and Futurescapes" co-hosted by Forum Transregionale Studien Berlin (05/2024)

"The Contemporary Tunisian Arabic Novel as a Narrative Genre" at the interdisciplinary workshop "Modern Tunisian Literatures" funded by the Dahlem Junior Host Program 2022 at Freie Universität Berlin and co–hosted with Professor Mohamed–Salah Omri, University of Oxford (09/2022)

"Contemporary Tunisian Arabic Prose in Search of the Past" delivered at the 34th "Deutsche Orientalistentag" (DOT) (09/2022)

"Between Palestine and North Africa: Transnational Literary Networks During the Tunis Period (1982–1994)" delivered at the international workshop "Futures for Palestinian Literature" hosted by the ERC–Project PalREAD, Freie Universität Berlin (07/2022)

Contribution at the multilingual workshop "Writing and Translating with an Accent" delivered at the Cluster of Excellence 2020 "Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective" (05/2022)

"Salma Khadra Jayyusi as a Literary Critic" delivered at the Annual Convention of the Modern Language Association (MLA) (01/2022)

"Narratives of Space: Urban vs. Rural Space in Contemporary Tunisian Prose" delivered at "Colloque international: Les représentations paysagères dans les littératures du monde arabe et du Proche–Orient" (INALCO, CERMOM, Sorbonne) (10/2021)

"الكاتب التونسي مصطفى الكيلاني: كاتب النص وقارئ التاريخ" خلال المدرسة الصيفية الدولية الثنائية اللغة التي تنظمها الأكاديمية العربية الألمانية للباحثين الشباب (AGYA) بعنوان "بحثًا عن القارئ: مقاربات جديدة لممارسات القراءة ووظائفها وتواريخها في الأدب والفنون والإعلام والثقافة العربية" (08/2021)

"Narrating the Past: Tunisian Prose and the Uprisings of 2010/11" delivered at the Annual Conference "Knowledge, Power, and Middle Eastern Studies", British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) (07/2021)

"Translation and Transmission: A Literary Case Study of French and Arabic in Postcolonial Tunisia" delivered at the Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation Conference "Translational Spaces: Language, Literatures, Disciplines" (02/2020)

"Lesarten des Skandals in Hassouna Mosbahis Ḥikāya tūnisīya (A Tunisian Tale)" delivered at the Annual Conference "Eskalation! Skandal in der Literatur und in den Künsten", Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies (10/2019)

"Tunisian Arabic Poetry amidst the 2011 Uprisings: Munsif Al–Wahaybi and Awlad Ahmed" delivered at the Summer School "The Politics of Literature – Literature and Politics", Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies (07/2019)

"Dimensions of Nation, Memory and Identity in Contemporary Tunisian Poetry" delivered at the Annual Conference "Joining the Dots: Interdisciplinarity in Middle East Studies", British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) (06/2019)

"Identity and Alterity in Contemporary Arabic Poetry: Perspectives towards the "West" in poems of Maḥmūd Darwīš, Adūnīs and Fuʾād Rifqa" delivered at the Annual Conference "Movement and Migration in the Middle East: People and Ideas in Flux", British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) (07/2017)

"Identity and Alterity in the Poetry of Mahmoud Darwish: Challenging Boundaries in the Context of Occupation" delivered at the Oxford Graduate Conference "Crossings: Negotiating Borders and Boundaries in the Eastern Mediterranean", University of Oxford (04/2017)

Events:

Organisation of the panel “Arabic Speculative Literature amidst Destruction, Repression, and Trauma”, Annual Conference of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), Washington, D.C. (11/2025)

Organisation of the Panel “Hierarchies of the Past, Entanglements of the Future” at the conference “Futures of Doing Literature”, Cluster of Excellence “Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective” (07/2025)

Conception of the international workshop "Arabic Magical Realisms" of the Cluster of Excellence "Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective" (05/2025)

Coordination of the international workshop "Anthologies Across Cultures: Textual Methods – Aesthetic Practices – Temporal Entanglements" at the Cluster of Excellence "Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective" (11/2024)

Initiator & Host of the guest lecture "War, Trauma, Memory – Magical Realisms in Lebanese Diasporic Writing" by Prof Tarek El-Ariss as part of the project "Magical Realisms and Speculative Literature" at the the Cluster of Excellence "Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective" (11/2024) 

Chair at the workshop "FINAL ISSUES: Endings in Modern Intellectual History" co-hosted by Zentrum für Literaturforschung (ZfL) and the Cluster of Excellence "Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective" (10/2024)

Conception and Host of the interdisciplinary workshop "Modern Tunisian Literatures" funded by the Dahlem Junior Host Program 2022 at Freie Universität Berlin and co–hosted by Professor Mohamed–Salah Omri, University of Oxford (09/2022)

Organising member of the international workshop "Futures for Palestinian Literature" hosted by the ERC–Project PalREAD, Freie Universität Berlin (07/2022)

Organisation of a Workshop against Discrimination at Universities, Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies with Ayla Satilmis (02–03/2022)

Panel Conception & Chair of the Panel "Narrating Upheaval in North Africa" at the Annual Conference "Knowledge, Power, and Middle Eastern Studies", British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) (07/2021)

Co–organisation of the Annual Conference "Borrowed Wor(l)ds: Aneignung jenseits des Anführungszeichens", Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies, (10/2021)

Conception & Chair of the Reading Group "Epistemologies of the ‘Global South’", Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies (Winter Term 2019/2020)

Response delivered at the Online Workshop "Framing Narratives: New Perspectives on Premodern Textual Production in Arabic", Freie Universität Berlin (11/2020)

Active Member and Host of several Sessions of the Anonym Classic Reading Group "Framing Narratives", Freie Universität Berlin (2020 – 2022)

Co–organisation of the Summer School "The Politics of Literature – Literature and Politics", Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies (07/2019)

Organisation and Moderation of Literary Readings with Yousef Qasmiyeh, Claire Trévien, Khalid Lyamlahi and about Jawdat Haydar & Host of a Multilingual Literary Salon, Oxford University World Literature Society (2017 – 2018)

Monographs

The Tunisian Novel – Narratives of Liberation, Emancipation and Decoloniality, Edinburgh Studies in Modern Arabic Literature, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming 2027.

Edited Volumes

with Mohamed-Salah Omri. Modern Tunisian Literatures: Multilingual Realities, Genealogies, Testimonies, New York: Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2026.

Peer-Reviewed Articles

with Refqa Abu-Remaileh. “A Locus-Less Literature: The Parallel Geographies of Palestinian Literature during the Tunis Period (1982-1994),” Journal of Arabic Literature, 55:4 (2024), 428-464, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/1570064x-12341519.

“Framing Narratives in Muṣṭafā al-Kīlānī’s Mayār (2017): A Contemporary Tunisian Perspective on Literary Framing Between Theory and Practice,” In ‘Framing Narratives’, ed. Simon Godart, Beatrice Gruendler, Johannes Stephan. Articulations (May 2024), DOI: https://doi.org/10.60949/MHA7-ZA95.

“Language Contacts in Arabic Poetry: Patterns of Merging Languages in the Poetry of Adonis and Fuad Rifka,” Middle East - Topics & Arguments (META) 13 (2019), 77-87, DOI: https://doi.org/10.17192/meta.2019.13.8077.

Book Chapters

“Trends and Movements of the Tunisian Novel in Arabic,“ Modern Tunisian Literatures: Multilingual Realities, Genealogies, Testimonies, New York: Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2026.

with Mohamed-Salah Omri. “Introduction,” Modern Tunisian Literatures: Multilingual Realities, Genealogies, Testimonies, New York: Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2026.

Peer-Reviewed Contributions in Encyclopedias & Academic Blogs

“Precolonial Memory, Postcolonial Critique: Ibn Khaldun in Tunisian Arabic Fiction of the 21^st Century,” TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research, 11.09.2025, https://doi.org/10.58079/14miw.

“Ḥassūna al-Muṣbāḥī: Ḥikāya tūnisiyya,” Arnold, H.L. (eds) Kindlers Literatur Lexikon (KLL), 2025, Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05728-0_23774-1.

Contributions to Digital Humanities Data Sets

Contributed data and visualisations to Refqa Abu-Remaileh. Country of Words: A Transnational Atlas of Palestinian Literature, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2023, URL: https://countryofwords.org/, DOI: 10.21627/2023cw.

Science Communication

Video Podcast (German with Arabic and English subtitles): “Der Divan – Im Gespräch mit Hanan Natour,” 07.02.2025, URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rMa3zHvY8I.

Blog contribution: “Modern Tunisian Literatures: An Interdisciplinary Workshop in Berlin,” Literaturwissenschaft in Berlin, 20.11.2022, URL: https://literaturwissenschaft-berlin.de/modern-tunisian-literatures/.

Press release: “Moderne tunesische Literaturen im Fokus,” myscience (2022), URL: https://www.myscience.de/news/wire/moderne_tunesische_literaturen_im_fokus-2022-FUB.

Report: “Literature and Patterns of Power” (2019), URL: https://www.geisteswissenschaften.fu-berlin.de/friedrichschlegel/aktivitaeten/summerschool/2019/index.html.

Interviews

“A Homeland in Language: Hanan Natour talks with Munsif al-Wahaybi.” In: ArabLit Quarterly 1,1 (2018), 53-8.

Translations

“Muhammad Al-Saghir Awlad Ahmad: ”مصعد بإتجاه الهاوية“ and ”تونسي، دفعة واحدة، أو لا أكون“, “Tunisian I am, for once and for all, or else I will not be” and “Ascending towards the Abyss,” International Poetry Review 47 (2024), 27-34.

“Munsif al-Wahaybi: Two Poems,” ArabLit Quarterly 1,1 (2018), 59-60.