In this talk, Nermin Elsherif connects two research projects that were born in different disciplinary contexts both taking place in Egypt between 2016 and 2022. The first is the Other Maps of Egypt a project that was informed by her architectural and urban design training and her curiosity towards oral history. This project took different lives and forms from a written thesis to a series of workshops and installations done with the History Workshops of Egypt. The second is a doctoral project that ambitiously aimed at the beginning to ‘map’ the internet searching for alternative interpretations of the nation’s past at a moment of defeat. Yet, it ended up being a digital ethnographic exploration of the online memorials and echo chambers of statist conservative nostalgia. In this discussion, Nermin reflects on how our research questions and methodological approaches are shaped by our changing political and societal realities, and how an intellectual commitment to specific values can be formed across disciplines and research projects.
Thu 18 Apr 2024
