Professor Hugh Roberts

We are deeply sad to announce that our esteemed colleague Dr Hugh Roberts passed away on 12 May 2025.

Dr Hugh Roberts was a specialist on North Africa and carried out in-depth research, including extensive fieldwork, on Algeria in particular. He was the Edward Keller Professor of North African and Middle Eastern History at Tufts University from 2012 to 2022. Between 1976 and 1997 he lectured at the Universities of East Anglia, Sussex, California (Berkeley) and the School of Oriental and African Studies and from 1997 to 2002 he was a Senior Research Fellow at LSE. He also worked outside academia as an independent scholar and consultant and as Director of the International Crisis Group’s North Africa Project from 2002 to 2007 and again from February to July 2011. He is the author of The Battlefield: Algeria 1988-2002. Studies in a broken polity (Verso, 2003; p/b 2015); Berber Government: the Kabyle polity in pre-colonial Algeria (I.B. Tauris, 2014; p/b 2017); Algérie-Kabylie: Études et interventions (Éditions Barzakh, 2014); and Gouvernement Berbère: La Cité kabyle dans l’Algérie précoloniale (Éditions Barzakh, 2023).

Expertise

North Africa, Algeria