April 2026

Franck Mermier, an anthropologist, is a Research Director at the CNRS (Interdisciplinary Research Institute on Social Issues, Campus Condorcet, Aubervilliers). He directed the French Centre for Yemeni Studies in Sana’a from 1991 to 1997, and the Contemporary Studies Department at the French Institute of the Near East in Beirut from 2006 to 2009. He holds a PhD in anthropology from EHESS (1988), a Habilitation to Supervise Research (Aix-Marseille University, 2010), and a Master’s degree in Arabic language and civilisation (Paris III University, 1982).

He has published several studies on Yemeni society, including The Sheikh of the Night: Sana’a, the Organisation of Souks and Urban Society (Actes Sud, 1997). His research focuses on urban societies and cultural production in the Arab world, notably The Book and the City: Beirut and Arab Publishing (Actes Sud, 2005) and City Narratives: From Aden to Beirut(Actes Sud, 2015). He also co-edited, with Christophe Varin, Memories of War in Lebanon (Actes Sud, 2010), and with Charif Majdalani, Perspectives on Publishing in the Arab World (Karthala, 2016).

He has contributed to numerous translation projects of Arabic humanities and social sciences into French and coordinated the volumes Yemen: Writing War (Classiques Garnier, 2018) and Free Writings from Syria: From Revolution to War(Classiques Garnier, 2018). His research on urbanity is part of a comparative framework. In this context, he co-edited, with Virginie Milliot, Is Urban Anonymity Universal? A Comparative Anthropology of Urbanity (Karthala, 2024).