The mid-term evaluation is organized in two parts and starts with a 2-hour public seminar, followed by a closed meeting.
The purpose of the evaluation is to assess the progress of the PhD project at a point when it is still possible to make small or substantial changes. In general, we want to know how the candidate is doing, how much work is done, and what is left.
About the PhD candidate and her research
Ingvild Tomren completed her Master of Middle Eastern Studies and Arabic at IKOS in the Spring of 2015. Her Master's topic was on a new genre within Egyptian youth music and she conducted fieldwork in Cairo. The thesis focused on how the music served as a means of expression and outlet for young marginalized Egyptians in an authoritative state. She also has a Bachelor of Middle Eastern Studies from IKOS, in addition to two semesters of language exchange at the International Language Institute in Cairo. In the first year of her Bachelor she studied Social Anthropology at the Faculty of Social Sciences.
In addition to her studies she has gained working experience from a variety of jobs including counseling, freelance translation, teaching and providing information to asylum seekers in Arabic. She also participated in the IKOS based project "In 2016" where she contributed with an article on pop music and underground music in Egypt after the Arab spring.
Her academic interests include popular culture and music in the Middle East, with a focus on Egypt, as well as sociolinguistics and the Arabic speech community.
Her PhD project will examine Egyptian popular music in the early twentieth century. She wants to look at how ordinary people were marked and reflected in the music, and in what ways it represents a counterculture in this transformative period.