Alaa Talbi is a Doctor of History, member of the Editorial Board of the Journal IBLA, Institut des Belles Lettres Arabes, and Director of the Tunisian Forum for the Economic and Social Rights. He is also an associate member of the Arab Council for Social Sciences and member of the Advisory Member of advisory board of the Global Greengrants Fund Middle East and North Africa.

He was the organizer of the World Social Forum in Tunis in 2013 and 2015, in Salvador de Bahia- Brazil in 2018, Mexique in 2022, Népal 2024 , Benin 2026 and is a member of the Secretariat of the International council of the World Social Forum. He has supervised many projects about the role of social movements, social and environmental justice, migration, and social and economic rights in the process of transitional justice.

Alaa was a Fellow of the IFAO (in Cairo) and of the IFPO (in Damascus) between 2007 and 2011 and has authored several articles and books on the history of the Islamic East under Mongol domination in the Middle Ages. He is interested in socio-economic questions and the emergence of new actors and all the controversial news of a post-revolutionary Tunisia.