Current guest researchers

Shaimaa Atef

Shaimaa Atef is a PhD candidate in the Analysis and Management of Cultural Heritage at Scuola IMT Alti Studi Lucca in Italy. Her research explores the administrative history of antiquities management bodies in Egypt, with a particular focus on the governance and administration of public museums. She holds a Master’s degree in Cultural Heritage Management from Sorbonne University, Paris 1 (2014), where she published her thesis on the architectural preservation of the vernacular heritage of Siwa Oasis, Egypt. In 2015, she further specialized in research methodologies by earning a Diploma in Research Methods and Skills from the Maastricht School of Management, Netherlands.

Christina de Korte

Christina de Korte is a visual artist and a student in the research master’s program in Religious Studies at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Fine Art from the HKU University of Arts Utrecht and a bachelor’s degree in Language and Culture Studies from Utrecht University. Her master’s thesis research “Let the Textile Speak: Egyptian Khayamiya Through the Streets of Cairo” focuses on the Egyptian appliqué technique khayamiya—derived from the Arabic word for tent, namely khayma—and its contemporary usages before and during Ramadan. By following the routes of various types of khayamiya through Cairo’s streets and taking courses in the Street of the Tentmakers, she analyses how khayamiya dresses up the city, and invites people to interact with it. This interdisciplinary approach between textiles, heritage, material religion, and (art-)history makes it possible to let the textile speak.

Claudia Cazzaniga

Claudia Cazzaniga is a graduate student at the University of Milan, pursuing a Master's degree in Languages and Cultures for Communication and International Cooperation. Her master's dissertation explores the structure of personal networks among migrant women from Egypt to Italy, according to a qualitative and gender-sensitive approach. Her project involves field research, including in-depth interviews with a sample of Egyptian women living in a multicultural neighborhood in Milan, as well as with their families in Egypt. The research focuses on the changes in relational dynamics within these networks following migration.

Annmarie Kiiskinen

Annmarie Kiiskinen is a CHASE AHRC funded Doctoral Researcher at the collaborative PhD project ‘Transnational Solidarity, Patronage, and Politicking: Egyptian-Southern African Relations in the Global Cold War’ with SOAS University of London, Birkbeck University of London and Arab and African Research Center in Cairo. Following studies in Middle Eastern studies and work in diplomacy and conflict resolution, she is writing her PhD thesis on the the histories of African liberation and anticolonial solidarity in Nasser’s Egypt, looking at the role of Afro-Arab politics and African activists in Cairo.