Contacts in the MENA region: a brief introduction

Vera Tsukanova is a PhD student and research assistant at the Department of Semitic Studies of the University of Marburg, CNMS. She graduated from Russian State University for the Humanities (Moscow) with a specialization in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics and the Arabic language. Her doctoral dissertation project is concerned with the evolution of the derivational verbal system of Arabic in its Semitic context.

Evgeniya Prusskaya is a researcher at the Institute of World history of Russian Academy of Sciences and an assistant professor at the Faculty of History of the State Academic University for the Humanities (Moscow, Russia). Her PhD dissertation was dedicated to the mutual perceptions of the French and the local population in the times of the Napoleon’s invasion to Egypt. Currently she works on French colonialism in North Africa, particularly on French Algeria in the nineteenth century.