Message From The Chair
The department offers an unrivalled vantage point from which to study the history of Egypt, the wider region, and the world. Students can conduct research into local primary sources, visit the sites their textbooks describe, and immerse themselves in a city where different temporalities and modes of power coexist.
Egypt and the Middle East are privileged sites of inquiry because of the university’s geographical location, and the department is home to outstanding scholars who have devoted themselves to the study of various regions (like sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia) and fields of inquiry (gender and family, urban landscapes, social class, cultural formations, decolonization, and many more).
At a time when we face acute uncertainty about the future — ours and the planet’s — it is more urgent than ever to question the past and shed light on the power dynamics, intellectual currents, and belief systems that have shaped us and our circumstances. Seeing how things were, how they came to be, and how they could easily be different will equip us to survive, and affect, the radical transformations that are coming. Historians of the future, unite! You have nothing to lose but the shackles of your preconceived ideas.
Chair and Associate Professor
Sultan Al-Qasimi Department of History