About

I am a Research Fellow at Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) in the "Religion and Intellectual Culture" unit, where I examine how Islamic movements and Muslim intellectuals have navigated secular governance and shaped public discourse in Francophone West Africa since the 1960s. Through extensive fieldwork and archival research in Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, and Togo, I am investigating the intersection of Islamic activism, secularism and Muslim politics. I am paying particular attention to how educational institutions have served as key sites of religious mobilisation.

My recent book, Religious Activism on Campuses in Togo and Benin (Madore, 2025) , explores how Christian and Muslim student associations emerged in the 1970s and profoundly reshaped university life in Lomé and Abomey-Calavi, challenging prevailing secular ideologies.

A significant dimension of my work involves digital humanities (DH) approaches. I am developing the Islam West Africa Collection (IWAC), an open-access database featuring over 13,500 items documenting Islam across the region. Using computational methods and artificial intelligence workflows, I analyse this vast corpus to uncover large-scale patterns in religious mobilisation, the evolution of Islamic discourse, the media's representation of Islam and the shifting relationships between Muslim communities and state authorities. Data visualisation techniques enable me to translate these computational findings into accessible narratives that reveal new aspects of Muslim public engagement.

I am also the author of La construction d'une sphère publique musulmane en Afrique de l'Ouest (Madore, 2016) and co-editor of Religiosity on University Campuses in Africa (Sounaye and Madore, 2023) . I have also co-edited two special journal issues: "Muslim Minorities in Africa, Part 1" (Madore and Schulz, 2021) & "Part 2" (Madore and Schulz, 2022) and "Les acteurs religieux africains à l'ère du numérique" (Millet-Mouity and Madore, 2017) . My research has been published in eleven peer-reviewed journals and six edited volumes.

Beyond academia, I apply this regional expertise as a consultant for Communitology, developing specialized Country of Origin Information (COI) reports for asylum and immigration cases involving Benin, Côte d'Ivoire, and Togo.

I hold a Ph.D. with distinction in History from Université Laval and was previously a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Florida. Through my ongoing research and DH projects, I explore new approaches to understanding the dynamics of Muslim societies in Francophone West Africa, combining traditional historical methods with innovative computational techniques.