Board member

Afaf Mahfouz is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist serving patients of diverse social, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds and Chair of the Committee of the UN International Psychoanalytical Association. Afaf Mahfouz is Past President of the Conference of Nongovernmental Organizations in Consultative Relationship with the UN and previously taught law at Helwan University in Cairo.

Amal Abou El-Fadl is an Assistant Professor at the English Department, the Faculty of Arts, Cairo University. She obtained her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature in 2003. The topic of her dissertation was "Islands Myths: A Comparative Study of the Role of the Island in some Representative English and German Novels.

Amina Elbendary is currently an adjunct faculty member at the Department of Arabic and Islamic Civilizations at the American University in Cairo (AUC). She earned her PhD in July 2007 from the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of Cambridge. Her dissertation was entitled “Faces in the Crowd: Urban Protests in Egypt and Syria in the Late Middle Ages.

Amira Sonbol is Professor of Islamic History, Law and Society at Georgetown University, Doha Qatar campus, where she teaches courses on the History of Modern Egypt, Women and Law, and Islamic Civilization. She is also is the Founder and Director of the Qatar University International Affairs Program and currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of HAWWA: the Journal of Women of the Middle East and the Islamic World and Co-Editor of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations.

She is currently an adjunct faculty member at the Department of Arabic and Islamic Civilizations at the American University in Cairo (AUC). She received both her BA and MA from the American University in Cairo (1986&1990) and her PhD from Cairo University (1996) in Islamic History.  Her specialization or discipline is early and medieval Islamic history.

Hoda Elsadda is Co-founder and current Chairperson of the Board of Trustees of the Women and Memory Forum. She holds a Chair in the Study of the Contemporary Arab World at Manchester University, and is Co-Director of the Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World in the UK (www.casaw.ac.uk).

Mervat Hatem is Professor of Political Science at Howard University in Washington DC. She was president of the Middle East Studies Association in 2008. She has published more than 50 journal articles and book chapters on gender and politics in the Middle East and in North America. She earned her MA from the American University in Cairo in 1975.

Rania Abdel Rahman is an assistant lecturer at the Department of English Language and Literature at Cairo University where she earned her BA in 1993. In 1996, she earned her MA in Modern English Studies from Queen Mary & Westfield College, University of London, UK. She has participated in a number of national and international conferences on gender and women's studies.

Sahar Sobhi Abdel-Hakim is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Cultural Studies at Cairo University. She has been extensively involved with research on Arabic and English travel writings. In addition, she is concerned with gender and women’s studies. Among her scholarly writings are Interpreting the Orient: Travellers in Egypt and the Near East, edited by Paul and Janet Starkey (2001) and Modernism and Postmodernism: East and West (2001).

Omaima Abou-Bakr is Professor of English & Comparative Literature at Cairo University. She received her education at Cairo University, North Carolina State University, and the University of California at Berkeley. She specialized in medieval Sufi poetry and comparative topics in medieval English and Arabic literature.