Ali Al Tuma is postdoctoral researcher in the NWO project “The Great Game of Pandemics,” led by Dr. Ozan Ozavci at Utrecht University. His focus area (and collaborating with members of COOPERATION) is sanitary internationalism in Morocco.

He has background in the Spanish-Moroccan colonial history of the early 20th century. His master and doctoral theses, both written at Leiden University, focused on the participation of Moroccan troops in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), interviewing the last surviving Moroccan veterans of General Franco’s armies in that conflict. As a postdoctoral fellow, he worked for the ERC’s SlaveVoices (at Sciences Po Paris) project researching slavery in the former Spanish Sahara.
In addition to his historical profile, his research experience includes contemporary conflicts, having done field work for the United Nations University (Tokyo) on transitional justice within the context of the war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in Iraq, as well as the rise of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces that fought ISIS in the country.