Dr Charis Boutieri was educated at the University of Oxford (BA), the London School of Economics and Political Science (MSc), and Princeton University (PhD). She is a theoretically driven anthropologist whose work advances critical debates on public voice and democracy, grounded in more than two decades of ethnographic fieldwork in North Africa. Her scholarship has received competitive research funding and international recognition through reviews, citations, and invitations to provide expert advice. Her recent research has been strongly collaborative, reflected in her participation in major funded projects and the co-organisation of international workshops.

Her earlier work examined the communicative infrastructures and historical conditions that enable public voice in Morocco. Focusing on multilingualism, this research traced the intersecting colonial, developmental, and neoliberal logics that have shaped language ideologies and educational policy. These themes informed her broader understanding of the social and political pressures operating at Europe's southern peripheries. This body of work culminated in the monograph Learning in Morocco: Language Politics and the Abandoned Educational Dream (Indiana University Press, 2016) alongside a range of peer-reviewed and public-facing publications.

Her most recent monograph, Speaking Freedom: The Tunisian Public Sphere between Revolution and Democracy(Cambridge University Press, 2026), asks what a North African country can teach us about democracy in an era of global democratic crisis. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research into the Tunisian Revolution and its aftermath, the book explores how ordinary citizens reshaped political life and why their experiences matter beyond Tunisia's borders. Through a close examination of this understudied case, the book challenges established assumptions about revolutions, democracy, and the relationship between the two. It offers both a compelling account of political transformation and a systematic framework for rethinking democratic participation. At a time when democratic institutions are under pressure worldwide, Speaking Freedom argues that the Tunisian experience demonstrates how citizens can reinvent public life and expand political possibility. Research for the book was supported by a Leverhulme Trust Fellowship (2014–2015) and a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship (2021–2022). Findings from the project have also appeared in History and Anthropology and the Cambridge Journal of Anthropology.

Building on these individual research projects, Dr Boutieri has sought to bring anthropology's longstanding critique of rationality into dialogue with post-Cold War debates on mass participation and deliberative democracy. To this end, she co-edited the special issue Beyond Public Reason for the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (2025) The special issue revisits the concept of liberal public reason, tracing its intellectual lineage from Enlightenment philosophy through Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls to its contemporary role in political institutions and global governance. The contributors examine alternative forms of public reasoning grounded in vernacular, embodied, and relational practices. Rather than framing liberalism against presumed "illiberal" alternatives, the volume highlights diverse modes of deliberation - including community organising, legal argumentation, spiritual claims, and practices of solidarity - that reconfigure public reason as plural, situated, and responsive to deep difference.

Collaborative research projects

Dr Boutieri has been actively involved in a number of collaborative research initiatives supported by external funding:

1. 2020 – Joined the Collaborative Interdisciplinary Team of Experts for the ERC-funded project Takhayyul, which explores the political effects of imagination in Muslim societies (www.takhayyulproject.com).
2. 2023–present – Member of the research team for the ERC-funded project Praxis of Coexistence. Her research examines how recently migrated North African communities navigate public interactions (discursive and non-discursive) at the margins of what is conventionally understood as Britain's public sphere.
3. 2025 – Co-organised the Wenner-Gren Foundation-funded workshop Public Reason and Coexistence in the Mediterranean. The workshop led to the forthcoming edited volume Democratic Cultures on the Edges of Europe ( UCL Press/University of Chicago Press).
4. 2026 – Member of the research team awarded an EU COST ACTION grant for the project EDGE: Edges of Democracy, Geography & Environment (CA25134)

Professional service and public engagement

Dr Boutieri served as Associate Editor of the Journal of North African Studies (2017–2022) and Treasurer of the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association (2016–2019). She has disseminated her research through invited expert engagements with the British Council (UK and Tunisia) and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) MENA Research Unit. In 2018, she joined the UK–Tunisia Higher Education and Scientific Research Joint Commission.

Research interests

• Democracy
• Revolution
• Politics
• Political thought
• Policy and society

Latest publications

• Boutieri, C., Everett, S.S. and Weiss, E. (2025). "Introduction: Beyond Public Reason." Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 31, 965–983.
  https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9655.14318/
• Boutieri, C. (2025). "Beyond Words: Non-Dialogical Public Reason in (Post-)Revolutionary Tunisia." Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 31, 984–1002.
  https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1467-9655.14317/
• Boutieri, C. (2024). "Against Mono-Presentism." American Ethnologist Online Collections.
  https://americanethnologist.org/online-content/collections/back-to-the-present/against-mono-presentism/
• Boutieri, C. (2023). "The Languages of Democracy in Post-2011 Tunisia." In T. Chafer & M.A. Majumdar (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Francophone Africa. Routledge.
  https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351142168
• Boutieri, C. (2023). "Events of Citizenship: Left Militantism and the Returns of Revolution in Tunisia." History and Anthropology, 34(2), 175–193.
  https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2020.1862104
• Boutieri, C. (2021). "The Democratic Grotesque: Distortion, Liminality, and Dissensus in Post-Revolutionary Tunisia." The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, 39(2), 59–77.
  https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/cja/39/2/cja390205.xml
• Boutieri, C. (2020). "Bastardy and Irreverence: The Injuries of Kinship in Post-Revolutionary Tunisia." Hespéris-Tamuda, 52(4), 131–149.
  https://www.hesperis-tamuda.com/Downloads/2020/fascicule-4/6.pdf 
• Boutieri, C. (2018). "On Democratic Glossaries: 'Soft Power' and Hard Markets in Post-Revolutionary Tunisia." Journal of North African Studies, 23(3), 378–398.
  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13629387.2017.1391944
• Baldinetti, A. and Boutieri, C. (2018). "National Identities after 2011: Interrogating the Politics of Culture and Relations of Soft Power in the Maghrib." Journal of North African Studies, 23(3), 373–377.
  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13629387.2017.1391930
• Boutieri, C. (2016). Learning in Morocco: Language Politics and the Abandoned Educational Dream. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
  https://iupress.org/9780253020499/learning-in-morocco/ 

Research

• The social life of revolution and democracy
• Publics and the public sphere
• Non-liberal democratic aspirations
• Youth
• North Africa and the Middle East

Teaching

• States and Citizens in Political Anthropology
• Lived Democracy