Cultural Personality of the Year 2017

Dr. Abdellah Laroui

Morocco

The choice of the prominent historian and theoretician, Dr. Abdellah Laroui, has been due to his well-founded thought movement and cultural momentum that spanned across the entire Arab World. His valuable contribution surpassed academic institutes and scientific bodies to influence Arab political thinking as well as inspire numerous cultural and literary practices.
Professor Laroui enjoys a unique mix of in-depth knowledge of Arabic culture and that of the Western World, with wide interests across intellectual, literary and artistic scopes, especially in the fields of philosophy, history, narrative arts, and cinema. Since the sixties of the last century, Laroui portfolio includes numerous publications of scholarly studies, literary works and translations in a number of Moroccan, Arabic, and French journals. In 1967, his book “L’Idéologie arabe contemporaine” (The Contemporary Arabic Ideology) was published in French language with a preface by Maxime Rodinson, the infamous French historian, sociologist and orientalist. In 1970, the Arabic translation of the book became the stepping stone for the name of Abdellah Laroui as a key figure in the study of Arabic Culture, attracting the attention of scholars and academics with interests in Arabic culture and matters of the Arab World.