About

Thomas R. Serres is an Associate Professor in the Department of Politics within the Social Sciences Division at UCSC. His research spans Middle Eastern studies, critical security studies, critical race and ethnic studies, and comparative politics, with an ethnographic approach influenced by critical theory. He is particularly interested in the effects of protracted and entangled crises such as popular uprisings, the 'war on terror,' refugee crises, and neoliberalization in North Africa and beyond. Serres's first book, 'The Suspended Disaster: Governance by Catastrophization in Bouteflika’s Algeria,' published in 2023 by Columbia University Press, expands on a French edition released in 2019, and he has co-edited a volume on North Africa and Europe. His ongoing projects include analyses of authoritarian liberalism in France as a reaction to radical antiracist claims and studies of subversive and revolutionary mobilities between Europe and North Africa, focusing on Algeria and Tunisia.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Geography
• Multimedia
• Ancient history
• History
• Mathematics
• Law
• Geometry

Selected publications

• Democracy is awkward: grappling with racism Inside American grassroots political organizing

  Ethnic and Racial Studies · 2026-01-07

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Authoritarian liberalism and the triangulation of the antiracist left in France

  Ethnic and Racial Studies · 2025-09-18 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Diasporic Democratic Futures

  Middle East Critique · 2024-05-22 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  The Algerian diaspora mobilized massively to support the 2019 peaceful uprising known as the Hirak. In so doing, Algerians from abroad contributed to collective performances of citizenship and civility that redefined political subjectivities in both their country of origin and their host country. This article studies the experience of activists based in Tunis, Paris and the Bay Area. Drawing on the works of theorists of radical democracy such as Chantal Mouffe and Bonnie Honig, it shows the way in which diasporic citizens supporting a revolutionary movement challenge traditional statehood and interrogates the limits of their subversive political practices. It emphasizes three aspects of this transnational mobilization: the contradictory dynamics of deterritorialization and reterritorialization, the constitution of agonistic arenas, and the emergence of new modes of subjectivation.

  PublisherDOI

• Elections and the bureaucratic management of plurality in Algeria

  Routledge eBooks · 2023

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • Law

  This chapter examines elections in Algeria as a democratic technology of power aiming to discipline and integrate a threatening population in the structures of power under the control of bureaucratic-military apparatuses. It presents the problem inherent to popular consultations, as they are seen as potential moments of upheaval threatening to jeopardize the country’s economic and political development, and a necessity to produce legitimacy at the local and international levels. Moreover, elections also allow for the management of political parties and the making of the modern Algerian subject. Through clientelism or the promotion of female participation, the state apparatus can thus integrate various political actors and shape their behaviour. Yet this bureaucratic management of plurality results in forms of coercion and resistance that illustrate the tensions arising from any disciplinary project. As elections are met with calls for boycott and low turnout, state apparatuses struggle to shape “credible” electoral results and “responsible” forms of participation.

  PublisherDOI

• Appendix B: A Time Line for Bouteflika’s Algeria

  Columbia University Press eBooks · 2023

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • History
  • Geography
  PublisherDOI

• Politiques de la trahison

  NAQD · 2022

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  PublisherDOI

• The Algerian Hirak: the challenges of vulgarisation and the pitfalls of expertise. a book review essay

  The Journal of North African Studies · 2021-12-01

  review1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• After the Apocalypse: Catastrophizing Politics in Post-Civil War Algeria

  Università del Salento · 2019-01-01 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This paper examines the role of the civil war (1992–1999) in Algerian politics. It draws on Adi Ophir's notion of catastrophization and Walter Benjamin's conception of history to understand the fragile status quo under the presidency of Boutelika (1999–2019). Post-conflict stabilization led to the emergence of a political system in which the "Dark Decade" served as a regulatory framework supporting the existing political equilibrium. The war became a key element in a common political repertoire that shaped discourses, oriented policies, and conditioned the strategies of actors. At the same time, the persistence of structural issues that led to the violence of the 1990s (terrorism, political crisis, economic inequalities) legitimated the idea that the past could repeat itself at any moment. Thus, while ensuring the short-term resilience of the regime, catastrophizing politics also contributed to the pervasive revolutionary situation that characterized post-civil war Algeria.

  PublisherDOI

• Vous avez mangé le pays

  Cairn.info · 2019-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Il faut souligner la nature politique des revendications algeriennes et leur inscription dans l’histoire revolutionnaire de l’Algerie. Releguees dans le champ social par la repression politique, ces revendications ont pu converger et surgir a l’occasion de l’election presidentielle de 2019. Mais l’exemple tunisien montre que tout changement institutionnel doit s’accompagner de mesures sociales.

  Publisher

• You have devoured our country

  Esprit · 2019-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  The peaceful uprising of February 2019 has shaken the Algerian political system and resulted in the forced resignation of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. While the rejection of the presidential election scheduled in April of the same year was a key motive behind this popular mobilization, its root causes are also economic. Over the past decade, pervasive socioeconomic unrest has been increasingly articulated with political claims. The strategies implemented by past social movements are also a source of inspiration for the current mobilization. Popular calls for institutional changes are thus coupled with demands for social justice.

  Publisher

Frequent coauthors

• Y. Schuurman

  Institut de Recherches sur la Catalyse et l'Environnement de Lyon

  10 shared

• C. Mirodatos

  Institut de Recherches sur la Catalyse et l'Environnement de Lyon

  5 shared

• Claude Mirodatos

  Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1

  4 shared

• Lamia Dreibine

  4 shared

• Cindy Aquino

  Total (Belgium)

  4 shared

• Yves Schuurman

  Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

  4 shared

• Joris Thybaut

  Ghent University

  3 shared

• Guy Marin

  Weatherford (United States)

  3 shared