Outreach

My research orientation has inspired several outreach projects, which involved working with non-academic partners, including artists, activists and public servants. I have been striving to establish a different, non-hierarchical relationship between scholars, activists and the broader public in addressing injustice, theorising from and with concrete struggles on the ground.

You Have Not Yet Been Defeated roundtable conversation with Sanaa Seif and Nicola Pratt (24 October 2024, University of Leeds)

The roundtable conversation focused on Alaa Abd El-Fattah's book of essays You Have Not Yet Been Defeated and some of his key ideas contained therein, including his urgent messages about the challenges of democracy-building, resistance and solidarity in a repressive, dictatorial regime.

Alaa Abd El-Fattah is a prominent British-Egyptian activist and one of the leading voices of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. During the 2011 revolution, Alaa criticised the army’s abuses against the protesters and was imprisoned for “inciting violence against the army”. Since then, he has spent most of his time in prison, arrested for alleged violations of national security. He went on hunger strike from April 2022 to November 2022, during COP 27 in protest against the conditions of his imprisonment.

Alaa’s prison sentence ended on 29th September this year, but the regime refused to release him and so he remains illegally imprisoned. Laila Soueif, Alaa‘s mom, has been on hunger strike since the 30th of September over the continued imprisonment of her son.

His book You Have Not Yet Been Defeated is a collection of his writings, from essays to tweets to short notes and reflections smuggled out of prison, translated and edited by an anonymous collective of supporters. They cover the time of the 2011 Revolution and its aftermath. Anyone reading the book will immediately notice Alaa is an incredibly creative, innovative and versatile thinker. In his essays, he adopts a plurality of genres, metaphors and mediums to convey his urgent messages about the challenges of democracy-building, resistance and solidarity in a repressive, dictatorial regime.

Just a couple of weeks back, Alaa has been named this year’s PEN writer of courage. Arundhati Roy decided to share her prize with him “for the same reason that Egyptian authorities have chosen to keep him in prison for two more years instead of releasing him last month. Because his voice is as beautiful as it is dangerous. Because his understanding of what we are facing today is as sharp as a dagger’s edge.”

The roundtable conversation focused on Alaa's use of the metaphor of the monstrous to illustrate the condition of living and resisting in the wake of defeat. He writes we must embrace and recognise “the beauty in monstrosity”, “for only the monstrous can hold both the history of dreams and hopes, and the reality of defeat and pain together”. We discussed how these ideas speak to the Egyptian activists’ attempts to continue resisting in the wake of defeat and collectively grapple with the failure of the revolution.

We also examined the powerful appeal to solidarity that Alaa articulates in his You Have Not Yet Been Defeated, the essay that forms the book’s title. There Alaa says I have been defeated, but you—addressing people around the world, but perhaps specifically the citizens of liberal democracies—you have not yet been defeated. We talked about the significance of this invitation, this challenge for those who are still free to act, to resist injustice and oppression, to contest the status quo.

Last but not least, we showed a powerful clip from the campaign for Alaa’s release, where Alaa's mom, Laila Soueif announces her decision to go on hunger strike to contest the unjust and illegal imprisonment of her son. You can take a look at the clip here.

Many thanks again to Sanaa and Nicola for joining us for this conversation. It is our hope the roundtable raised awareness about the significance of Alaa’s writing, and his activism more generally, and helped support the campaign for his release.

A note on our distinguished speakers:

Sanaa Seif is Alaa’s sister, herself a prominent activist, writer and filmmaker involved in the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. She was an editor and shooter on the film The Square, which details the events of the Egyptian revolution from 2011 to 2013 and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary feature. Since her involvement in the Revolution, Sanaa has been very active in several protest movements and human rights campaigns, including the campaign for Alaa’s release. She was also arrested and imprisoned twice for her activism. Many see her as a symbol of resistance and the revolutionary spirit.

Nicola Pratt is a Professor of International Politics of the Middle East. She has written extensively on women's activism, democratization, human rights and conflict in a number of Middle Eastern countries, including Egypt. Between 2016 and 2020, she led a research project on 'Politics and Popular Culture in Egypt: Contested Narratives of the 25 January 2011 Uprising and its Aftermath, resulting in the curation of a digital archive of the 2011 Revolution.

Workshop on “When Ordinary Citizens Become Activists: Feminist Responses to Gender Violence during the Egyptian Revolution” (13 June 2023, University of Leeds)

The workshop hosted Yasmin El-Rifae, the author of Radius: A Story of Feminist Revolution. In conversation with Sahla Aroussi and Maša Mrovlje, Yasmin discussed her work on feminist activism during the Egyptian Revolution and reflected on the intersections of gender, violence and civic engagement more broadly.

As one of the first waves of protest in what became known as the Arab Spring, the Egyptian Revolution in 2011 represented a crucial moment of political engagement from citizens who before then may never have participated in this kind of explicit activism. While representing a crucial moment of civilian resistance against the state and its allies, the realities of sexual violence directed against women during protests brought to the fore ongoing tensions between civilians and raised questions about the meaning of revolution for different social groups. As El-Rifae writes, the attacks were seen as attacks “not only on women as women” but on “women as citizens,” challenging women’s capacity for civic engagement and the potential fulfilment of their rights as claim-making citizens. However, in response to attacks, feminist activists organised ordinary citizens, both women and men, into intervention and support teams to protect women from violence, Thus, they forged a new repertoire of civic engagement oriented to defending women’s right to participate in the public sphere.

To think about what citizenship means in everyday life requires close engagement with the experiences, perspectives and practices of diverse social groups. Ten years on, this discussion hopes to contribute to a broader conversation on how the social reality of violence against women conditions the modes and possibilities of citizenship as a practice, as well as what forms of civic engagement we may be able to appeal to in response.

Yasmin El-Rifae is a writer, editor and coproducer of the Palestine Festival of Literature. She is the author of Radius: A Story of Feminist Revolution, published by Verso in 2022, which follows the story of Opantish (Operation Anti-Sexual Harassment) during the Egyptian Revolution. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times, Mada Masr, Lux magazine, and other outlets.

The workshop was part of the AHRC-funded project Ordinary Citizenship and was co-organised with Alba Griffin and Derek Edyvane.

Podcast commemorating Rosa Luxemburg at 150

I contributed to a podcast marking Women's History Month, organised by genderED, RACE.ED, CRITIQUE, and the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) at Edinburgh. The podcast explores Luxemburg's life, political and intellectual activities, and asks what makes Luxemburg stand out as a theorist of social transformation. What is her place in the canon of international political theory? What are the implications of her theories on contemporary movements? Does disappointment hold political power, and how has it been utilised in Luxemburg’s work and modern revolutionary movements?

Deliberative laboratory on "Disappointed Hopes: Reclaiming the Promise of Resistance" (7-9 December 2020)

The laboratory brought together academics, activists and engaged artists to debate the possible strategies for reviving resistance today. The contributors discussed how an engagement with past disappointments, losses and defeats can help us creatively respond to the difficulties and failures of resistance – and inspire our imagination of political alternatives in the present. 

Virtual exhibition on "Hopes and Disappointments of the Egyptian Revolution" (2-13 December 2020)

The exhibition featured the work of the internationally acclaimed artist, designer and storyteller, Ganzeer. It depicted the events of the Egyptian revolution and its aftermath, focusing on the hopes engendered by the uprisings, the repression that followed and the sacrifices endured by the protesters.

FILM SERIES

I have co-organised four film and public lecture series on the topics of political violence, racial oppression and feminist politics. The series sought to raise public awareness about these issues through the creative, innovative medium of film, and provide a forum for discussing them in a supportive, communal setting.

Complicity I and II (March 2017 and February 2019, Edinburgh): How are we to judge actions, inactions and rationalisations of people who find themselves in a murky grey zone of complicity with violence? The film series explored cinematic depictions that bring the thorny issue of complicity to the fore, focusing on Nazi-occupied France, apartheid South Africa, Argentina’s Dirty War and communist Romania.

Legacies of Human Rights: Beyond the Legal Paradigm (January - April 2018, Edinburgh): The films shed light on the deeply entrenched practices of oppression and discrimination that elude the grasp of the legalist perspective. The range of topics included systematic race and gender violence in the US and the UK, apartheid violence in South Africa, and military dictatorship in Argentina.

Beyond Patriarchy (April 2019, Edinburgh): The film series sought to illuminate and challenge the varied faces of patriarchal oppression and violence. The selected films explored how the dynamics of patriarchy affect people's everyday lives and reinforce themselves across generations, while also unearthing forms of dissent, solidarity and resistance that arise in response. y you tell your story online can make all the difference.