Mhani Alaoui is a Casablanca-based writer and anthropologist. She lived in the US for twelve years, where she began by studying comparative literature and the recent history and cultures of the Arab World. She then went on to receive a PhD in Anthropology from Princeton University, focusing on illegal migration and gray borderlands in the Western Mediterranean. She was a Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the Casablanca School of Architecture until Summer 2021.