Academic Interests
Arabic Literature; Digital Cultures: Life/Writing: Arabic Modernity: Media History: Conceptual History; Ecocriticism.
My research interests include Arabic literature, media, popular culture, sociolinguistics, and the relation between aesthetics and politics. My current research focuses on Arab Futurism and its connection to social, political, and environmental changes in the region.
My first book is entitled Blogging From Egypt: Digital Literature (2005-2016 (Edinburgh University Press, 2019). It explores blogs as new form of literature emerging in Egypt during the rise of political protest of the Arab Spring. Such blogs are explored as forms of digital literature, combining literary analysis and interviews with the authors.
I am the co-editor of the volume Arabic Literature in the Posthuman Age (with S. Guth, Harassowitz Verlag 2019), that examines the use of dystopia, necropolitics, monsters and satire in Arabic literature today.
I am also the co-founder of the research network Arab Media Transitions (with Barbara Winckler, University of Muenster) which analyses the impact of media on Arabic literature and culture from a historical perspective.
In 2021, I received a MECAM Fellowship (Merian Centre for Advanced Studies in the Maghreb) to join the the Research Project "Imagining the Future: Dealing with Disparities" in the thematic cluster "Aesthetics and Politics".
I have published several articles in the Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, Oriente Moderno, Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies and LEA- Lingue e Letterature d’Oriente e d’Occidente. I occasionally write for the Egyptian online newspaper Mada Masr, Jadaliyya, Orient XXI and Strange Horizon.
Teaching and Tutoring
I teach various courses on undergraduate and graduate level, including:
- MØNA1300 - Litteraturhistorie og språkforhold i Midtøsten og Nord-Afrika (BA level course on the history of modern literatures in the Middle East)
- MØNA 2506 - Mass Media in the Middle East (Ba Level)
- MES4010 - Readings in Middle East Studies
- MES4210 og MES4220 - Topics in Arabic Studies I & II. The focus of these courses may vary every year. For example, in Spring 2018 the courses focused on: Arabic Cultural Production and the Arab Spring and Finding, Reading and Interpreting Arabic Sources for Your Master’s Thesis
Higher education and employment history
I obtained my PhD in Middle Eastern Studies and Literature from the University of Oslo in 2014 with a thesis entitled “Fictionalized Identities in the Egyptian Blogosphere” (2014). I completed my MA in Comparative Literature and Culture (with a focus on Arabic and English Literature) at the University “L’Orientale” in Napoli in 2008.
In 2009-2010 I worked as a Research fellow at the American University in Cairo, where I conducted research on contemporary Arabic literature and the impact of digital technologies on cultural production.
Between 2015-2017 I worked as a Post-Doc fellow at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages at the University of Oslo, with a research project entitled "The adīb and adab —Demise, or metamorphosis, the project: of a key figure and of a key concept of the Arab modernist project?" . The project has explored how concepts of "intellectuals", "author" and " literature" have evolved during the 20th century in Arabic/Egyptian society.
In 2015 I was a guest researcher at the American University in Beirut and at Orient Institute in Beirut to conduct research on the Arabic cultural press in the early 20th century.
In 2015-2016 I was affiliated to the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo as a guest researcher. In 2015 I was a guest lecturer at the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the American University in Cairo.