IFAO

We are delighted to announce the resumption of the 'Exploring Egypt: Histories and Historiographies' Seminar sessions, a joint initiative of the Ifao and DAIK, CAI, PCMA, NVIC, joined this year by the ARCE (American Research Center in Egypt).

The 14th session of the seminar series will be hosted at the Italian Archeological Center (Tahrir). It features Amr Khairy, entitled "Against the Storm: Histories of Energy and Technology in the Making of Global Warming from Nineteenth-Century Egypt" It is open to the public in the limit of available places.

Abstract:

In this talk, Amr Khairy asks how interdisciplinarity can shed new light on the history of nineteenth-century Egypt. Far from considering interdisciplinary research a new theoretical or methodological turn in the study of modern Egypt, this talk shows that beginning from the question of how the forces of global warming proliferated worldwide makes it possible to rediscover the familiar terrain of nineteenth-century Egyptian history, framed now as part of that global history. Approached in this way, new archival sources, events, sites, and figures emerge—previously overlooked yet deeply implicated in the making of modern Egypt.

From factory blueprints and veterinary medicine textbooks on epizootics to the memoirs of engineers and coal prospectors, as well as mechanics magazines and food-industry trade journals, new narratives emerge. They build upon the established historiography yet simultaneously provide fresh questions and illuminate new spaces for exploring history. Notably, this revisiting of modern Egyptian history—while grounded in technical and industrial sources—generates questions that reframe cultural, social, and conceptual histories related to Egypt’s place in the global turn to industrialization in the nineteenth-century, and with it the rise of the forces that made global warming an existential threat to humanity.

The broad methodological question this talk raises is relevant to scholars who do not necessarily work on Egypt’s modern history: in which ways can interdisciplinarity enrich research across the social sciences and humanities?

Exploring Egypt Seminar: Histories and Historiographies

A joint collaboration between the Ifao (Institut français d’archéologie orientale) & the DAIK (German Archaeological Institute in Cairo), joined in 2025 by the CAI (Centro Archeologico Italiano), PCMA (Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology Cairo), NVIC (Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo) and ARCE (American Research Center in Egypt).

This seminar series aims, broadly speaking, to discuss different aspects related to the production of historical knowledge on Egypt. Speakers are invited to reflect on the different ways of writing, narrating and thinking about Egypt’s history at different periods, as well as on the actors, contexts, and power relations involved in the production of historical narratives. By adopting an interdisciplinary perspective, the seminar series seeks to bring into conversation fields which have traditionally been examined separately, such as the history of Egyptology, the study of modern Egyptian historiography, and the history of heritage and preservation.

In addition, while the seminar series seeks to shed a critical light on the formation of specific disciplinary fields and traditions, it also moves beyond an exclusive focus on professional history writing, in order to explore the various institutions, genres, and channels, through which historical narratives have been produced and disseminated.  Among the themes that will be discussed, for instance, are the different “histories” of Egyptology, archaeology or Arabic and Islamic studies, academic versus “popular” representations of history, and heritage preservation as a site of production of historical narratives.

Exploring Egypt: Histories and Historiographies Seminar is organised by Fatma Keshk, Postdoctoral fellow at DAIK & Ifao and Malak Labib, scientific member of the Ifao.