Dr Remi Dewiere

Partner

School: Humanities and Social Sciences

I received his PhD in African History (2015) from Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne University (IMAf) and won a prize for my PhD thesis (2016) from the Institut sur l’Islam et les Sociétés du Monde Musulman (EHESS). From 2012 to 2021, I was Research Assistant in the ERC Project ConfigMed (Paris 1) and postodoctoral fellow in the EHESS (Centre Alexandre-Koyré), Max Weber Fellow in the European University Institute, and Marie Skłodowska-Curie COFUND fellow at the University of Warwick.

My book, Du lac Tchad à La Mecque. Le sultanat du Borno et son monde (xvie-xviie siècle) (Éditions de la Sorbonne, 2017), provides a new perspective on the functioning of an Islamic Sahelian state in the Early Modern period and its relationship with the world around it through the trans-Saharan routes.

Since this year, I work on migrants and skill-transfer in the Islamic World, from Timbuktu to Java, from the 16th century to the 1850s, in the UKRI project Migration, Adaptation, Innovation: 1500-1800.

Email Remi

Research Themes and Scholarly Interests

I am a historian interested in Islamic West Africa in the Early Modern and Modern period. In particular, I focus on State practices, diplomacy and circulations in Central Sahel, with a special focus on the Borno sultanate from the late medieval to the 19th century. In the past years, I worked on the relation between writing and power in Islamic Africa, and on the relation between migration and technologies related to firearms in the Islamic World.

Key Publications

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Migration, Adaptation, and Innovation: Firearms and Franco-Ottoman Technological Dialogue in Eighteenth-Century Algiers, Dewiere, R. 1 Mar 2026, In: Journal of World History
The Migration-Innovation Nexus in the Early Modern World, Gottmann, F., van Swet, F., Dewiere, R. 19 Mar 2026, In: Past and Present
Introduction: Migration and Technological Circulations in the Early Modern World, van Swet, F., Dewiere, R. 21 Nov 2025, In: Itinerario
Migration and knowledge diffusion: lessons from the early modern world, Gottmann, F., van Swet, F., Dewiere, R., Gunning, O. 12 Sep 2025, A Research Agenda for Migration and Innovation, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar
Migration and Innovation in Early Modern Islamic Societies: The case for Firearms, Dewiere, R. 1 May 2023, In: History Compass
Refugees in Africa, 1490–1820, Dewiere, R. 1 Jun 2023, The Cambridge History of Global Migrations, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press
The Slave and the Scholar: Representing Africa in the World from Early Modern Tripoli to Borno (N. Nigeria), Dewiere, R. 24 Mar 2023, In: Journal of Early Modern History
A city before Mecca: Cairo and the hajj of Kanem and Borno pilgrims (12th-17th c.), Dewiere, R. 1 Mar 2022, An African metropolis: Cairo and its African hinterland in the Middle Ages, Leiden, Netherlands, Brill
Tombouctou, 1591: À la croisée des migrations en Afrique, Dewiere, R. 17 Dec 2022, In: Diasporas
Looking for the lost norm: The power letters of Borno (1823-1918), Dewiere, R. 1 Aug 2021, In: Quaderni Storici