Fabrice Balanche

Fabrice Balanche (born November 3, 1969 in Belfort, France)^[1] is a geographer and specialist in the political geography of Syria, Lebanon, and the Middle East in general.^[2][3]

Biography[]

In 2000, he defended his thesis The Alaouites, space and power in the Syrian coastal region: an ambiguous national integration, which was taken up and published in 2006 under the title The Alaouite region and the Syrian power.^[4]

He has a Doctorate in political geography^[5][6] from the University of Tours (2000)^[7] and an associate in geography.^[8]

He lived for ten years between Lebanon and Syria,^[9] countries which represent his main fields of study^[7] since 1990.^[5] His field of research focuses on the interaction between power, community and territory.^[5]

On November 29, 2013, he obtained the accreditation to direct research on the theme: The community factor in the analysis of Syrian and Lebanese space.^[10]

He is a lecturer^[11] in geography, authorized to supervise research, assistant professor of geography and director of research^[12] at the University of Lyon 2,^[5] where he headed the Research Group on the Mediterranean and the Middle East (GREMMO ) until the end of 2015, the date of cessation of its activities.^{[7][13][14][15]}

In 2012, he published the Atlas of the Arab Middle East, a work devoted to the four states of Bilad al-Sham which, according to Confluences Méditerranée, brings "in an editorial landscape already provided (...) a real added value" notably thanks to its “original and educational” cartography.^[16]

He lodged an administrative appeal for having been excluded in December 2014 from the candidacy for the post of lecturer at the Institut d'études politiques de Lyon.^[17][18][19] The court ruled against him in December 2016.^[20] According to the academic Jean-Claude Pacitto, the appeal of Fabrice Balanche highlighted "the real reasons - patronage, politics - which govern exclusions, in particular in the human and social sciences" in higher education establishments in France . This affair revealed "the domination of certain currents of thought on the studies devoted to the Middle East, often marked either by an indulgence towards Islamism, or through an extreme left prism, or both at the same time.”^[21]

In 2015, Fabrice Balanche decided to leave Lyon and emigrate to the United States where he was a guest researcher at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think-tank^{[7][11][22][19]} from 2015 to 2017, then at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

The Atlas of the Arab Near East was published in English by Brill under the title Atlas of the Near East: State Formation and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1918–2010. In February 2018, Fabrice Balanche published a book on the Syrian conflict in English: Sectarianism in Syria's Civil War, in which he explains the community aspects of the war in Syria.

In November 2018, he spoke at an international conference entitled "One hundred years after the Eastern Front, Armenia and the Levant between wars and peace" along with experts on Armenia such as Richard G. Hovannisian, Claude Mutafian or Gérard Dédéyan which took place at the Municipal Library of Lyon.^[23]

During the Syrian civil war, he was accused of having a pro-Assad bias of the conflict, which he defended himself by asserting himself as “realistic.”^[24] He argued that his candidacy for a post of lecturer at Sciences Po Lyon had been rejected because not only of “patronage reasons,” but because his analyses on Syria went “against a certain ideological position, which turned out to be the Foreign Ministry's line on the Syrian revolution."^[25]

Publications[]

Books[]

• The Alaouite region and the Syrian power, editor Karthala, 2006, 313 p. ( ISBN 2845868189 )
• Atlas of the Arabic Near East, Paris-Sorbonne University Press RFI, 2012, 135 p. ( ISBN 978-284-050-7970 )
• Geopolitics of the Middle East, La Documentation française, Documentation photographique, Paris, 2014
• Atlas of the Near East: State Formation and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1918–2010, Brill, Amsterdam, 2017
• Sectarianism in Syria's Civil War, Washington Institute, 2018.

Collective works[]

• Beyrouth entre mondialisation et crise syrienne conference of 23 October 2013 at Saint-Joseph University of Beirut, Géosphères (Annales Géographie, Vol 33-34, 2012-2013, in collaboration with Liliane Buccianti-Barakat.

An Arab Spring?  : conference, Brest, 25–27 January 2012 / the Geopolitics of Brest; under the direction of Linda Gardelle; with contributions from Fabrice Balanche, Bernard Botiveau, Assia Boutaleb ... et al. / Paris: L'Harmattan, 2013. Articles "The die is cast: the Kurds cross the Euphrates", in Syria: a hope? Les Cahiers de l'Orient n ° 122, spring 2016. The battle of Aleppo is the center of the Syrian chessboard, February 5, 2016, Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The die is cast, the Kurds cross the Euphrates, January 5, 2016, Washington Institute for the Near East Policy. The Alawi community and the Syrian crisis, Middle East Institute, May 14, 2015. Syria: civil war and the internationalization of the conflict, Eurorient, n ° 42, 2013. Geography of the Syrian revolt, Outre Terre, n ° 27, September 2011. Clientelism, communitarianism and territorial fragmentation in Syria, A Contrario, March 2009. Syria, article on the Encyclopedia Universalis (collective writing)

Reception[]

He is regularly quoted in the written press on the subject of Syria^[26] in order to present his methods of mapping the Syrian civil war and to express his point of view on the situation.^{[5][27][28][29]}

He is recognized and named as an expert on the issues of development of the Middle East and the Syrian crisis^[7][30] and as "one of the leading French experts on Syria."^[5]

References[]

External links[]

• "Fabrice Balanche". Université Lumière-Lyon-II (in French). October 2015. Retrieved 27 February 2017.