Salim Hmimnat holds a BA in Cultural Studies and Ph.D. in Political Science from Mohammed V University in Rabat. He has been working since 2012 as a research fellow at the Institute of African Studies (IEA) at the same university. His research interests focus on two main areas: The first covers the interactive connections among the state religious policies, Islamist movements, and the modernization process in contemporary Morocco. The second has to do with the preventive and counter-violent extremism strategies in North Africa and the Sahel. He is the author of The Religious Policy in Morocco, 1984-2002: State’s Fundamentalism and Challenges of Authoritarian Modernisation [in Arabic], (Afrique Orient, 2018). He has also authored several scholarly articles and policy papers published in refereed academic journals and by think tanks.