Dr Dalia S. Mostafa

Teaching Fellow in Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies

  • Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies
  • School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures

Contact details

Address

Street

Room 2.8
19 George Square

City
Edinburgh
Post code
EH8 9LD

Availability

  • Drop-in hour (Semester 1, 2025/26): Monday 14:00-15:00, or by appointment

Biography

Background

Before joining Edinburgh University, I held the post of Associate Professor in the Middle Eastern Studies Department at Hamad Bin Khalifa University (Qatar) (2023-2025) where I taught on the MA programme of Women, Society and Development. Prior to that, I was a Senior Lecturer in Arab Cultural Studies at the University of Manchester (UoM). I attained my PhD degree in Comparative and Postcolonial Literature from the University of Manchester in 2007. Following the PhD, I was awarded a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Modern Arab Cultural History (2007-2011) at the Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World (CASAW) at UoM.  Then, I held the post of Lecturer in Arabic and Comparative Literature at UoM. I have studied and worked in different cities and universities: The American University in Cairo, Exeter University, Manchester University, and Hamad Bin Khalifa University (Doha).

Qualifications

PhD in Comparative and Postcolonial Literature,  Department of English and American Studies, The University of Manchester, 2007.

MA in English and Comparative Literature, Department of English and Comparative Literature , The American University in Cairo, 2002.

MA in Women’s Studies, Exeter University, 1993.

BA (Hons) in Political Science, The American University in Cairo, 1989.

Undergraduate teaching

Reading Arab Feminist Texts: Key Debates on Women's Rights in the Arab World (semester 1)

Gendering the Middle East (semester 2)

 

Research summary

My research and publications focus on Comparative and Postcolonial Literature, Women and Gender Studies, Middle Eastern and North African Cinema, and Popular Culture in the Arab World (with a focus on music). 

Current research interests

Currently, I am taking part in a co-authored book entitled "Popular Culture and Politics in Times of Revolution and Counter-revolution: The Case of Egypt." I am also engaged in several research projects on new literary currents in the Arab world following the 2011 revolutions, and the history of women's filmmaking and television programmes in Egypt.

Project activity

From 2016 to 2020 at Manchester University, I was the Co-Investigator of the “Politics and Popular Culture in Egypt: Contested Narratives of the 25 January Revolution and its Aftermath” project, through a grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), together with Warwick and Reading universities. One outcome of the project was the creation of the digital archive: https://egyptrevolution2011.ac.uk 

I was also the Principal Investigator of “Exploring the Socio-Cultural Implications of the 2011 Arab Uprisings and their Aftermath” project , University of Manchester (2015-2016); and Principal Investigator of “Women, Culture and the January 2011 Egyptian Revolution” project , through a grant from the Centre for British Research in the Levant (CBRL) and the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES). From 2011 to 2014, I was the Co-Investigator of the “Contemporary Arab Cinema” project, through a grant from the British Academy.

In the press

Selected media articles:

 

Books:

Peer-reviewed journal articles:

  • 2023: “روابط الأخوة والصداقة بين الأطفال الفلسطينيين في أفلام مي مصري” (Brotherly/Sisterly and Friendship Ties among Palestinian Children in Mai Masri’s Films), Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, issue 43 (January 2023), 118-148  (in Arabic).
  • 2022: “Women and Crime: The Egyptian Women’s Prison in Drama,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 54:1 (February 2022), 174-179.
  • 2015: المخرج نوري بلجي جيلان: سينما العلاقات الاجتماعية ” (Filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan: Cinema of Social Relations in Contemporary Turkish Society), Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, 35 (2015), 227-252 (in Arabic).
  • 2014: Co-authorship with Anastasia Valassopoulos: “Popular Protest Music and the 2011 Egyptian Revolution,” Popular Music & Society, 37:5 (2014), 638-659.
  • 2011: “Journeying through a Discourse of Violence: Elias Khoury’s Yalo and Rawi Hage’s De Niro’s Game,” Middle East Critique, 20:1 (Spring 2011), 21-45.
  • 2011: “Son‘allah Ibrahim’s al-Talassus: The Politics of Modernity in Egypt through the Child-Narrator’s Lens,” Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 47: 4 (2011), 416-427.
  • 2009: “Literary Representations of Trauma, Memory, and Identity in the Novels of Elias Khoury and Rabi‘ Jaber,” Journal of Arabic Literature, 42:2 (2009), 208-36.
  • 2009: “Cinematic Representations of the Changing Gender Relations in Today’s Cairo,” Arab Studies Quarterly, 31:3 (Summer 2009), 1-19.

Book chapters:

  • 2015: “Jocelyne Saab (Lebanon): A Lifetime Journey in Search of Freedom and Beauty,” in Ten Arab Filmmakers: Political Dissent and Cultural Critique, J. Gugler (ed.) (Indiana University Press, 2015), 34-50.
  • 2014: “The Child Torn between War and the Adult World: In the Battlefields Film by Danielle Arbid,” in Arab Feminisms: Gender and Equality in the Middle East J.S. Makdissi et al. (eds.) (I. B. Tauris, 2014), 279-288.
  • 2013: “Masculinity and Fatherhood within a Lebanese Muslim Community: Assad Fouladkar’s Film When Maryam Spoke Out,” in Popular Culture in the Middle East and North Africa: A Postcolonial Outlook W. El Hamamsy and M. Soliman (eds.) (Routledge, 2013), 65-79.
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