Dr. Haifa Tlili

Haifa’s doctoral research (Paris Descartes University – Sorbonne, 2008) centered on a comparative analysis of bodily and movement issues among women of Arabic-Muslim culture involved in departments of sport and physical education in France and Tunisia. From 2009 to 2012, she conducted research with Pr. Geneviève Rail (at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Concordia University in Montreal) on a project focusing on Quebecois Maghrebi women’s bodily discourses. More specifically, they looked at how women who emigrated from the Maghreb to Montreal discursively construct their body and their health in the context of hegemonic obesity discourses. She used feminist poststructuralist and postcolonial approaches that pushed to give voice to women.

Since 2013, she used this methodological framework in order to co-construct recommendations with/by/for different discriminated populations in France:

1. French young women in underprivileged neighborhoods: Why don't young girls want to practice sports? (2013-16, Paris Descartes University & UFOLEP);
2. Children in Paris & neighborhoods, their construction of health and physical activities (2016-18, Paris Descartes University & Play International NGO);
3. Since 2019, she has been working with NGOs for supporting hijabis women who want to play football games in competition and enabling the sports practice for all women without discrimination (Fare Network - Football Against Racism in Europe; Women Win NGO - Girls and Women Empowerment through Sport). Since then, she has accompanied Les Hijabeuses in an Action Research - Mobilization, allows with methodology to sensitize and bring together women with stakeholders to move towards a real feminization of soccer without excluding any woman by changing exclusionary regulations in France;
4. Continuing her work with female basketball athletes in France #BasketPourToutes, she studied those excluded from competitions by the FFBB in collaboration with stakeholders and human rights defenders (OHCHR United Nations, Amnesty International and major international NGOs in sport).

PUBLICATIONS

Tlili, H. et Caprais, A. (2025). Compétitions sportives : la liberté religieuse sommée de quitter les terrains. Les Cahiers du Développement Social Urbain, 82(2), 28-29. https://doi.org/10.3917/cdsu.082.0028.

Caprais, Annabelle, Meziani, Yamina et Tlili, Haïfa, 2024. La fabrique institutionnelle d’un problème public : le cas du port du voile dans le sport (2012-2024). Intersections. Revue semestrielle Genre & Droit [en ligne]. 16 décembre 2024. N° 2. https://doi.org/10.64977/intersections.vi2.15

RESEARCH GROUPS

Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sports (Minneapolis)

Simone de Beauvoir Institute (Concordia University, Montréal)