Nora Lafi is a French historian of Algerian origin, born in 1965 in Istres, near Marseilles. She is currently a researcher with the Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) in Berlin. She is a specialist of the history of the Ottoman Empire and specifically of Arab towns of North Africa and the Middle-East during the Ottoman period. She chairs, with Ulrike Freitag, the research field "Cities compared: cosmopolitanism in the Mediterranean and beyond", part of the EUME programme at Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin. She is co-founder and editor of H-Mediterranean (H-Net, Michigan State University).Nora Lafi is a significant expert in the following fields:History of the Ottoman EmpireHistory of Libya, Tunisia and AlgeriaThe notion of old regimeComparative historyUrban Studies Middle-East