NPF Cycle 4 Fellows

The New Paradigsm Factory (NPF) Program is a writing fellowship that aims at facilitating and supporting writing and publishing by Arab activists and junior scholars.

The theme of the 2019-2020 Cycle of the New Paradigms Factory Program is "Gendered Resistance."

Selected fellows are mentored by experienced activist-scholars for the writing and publishing of essays that critically reflect on dominant debates and offer alternative paradigms on the theme of “Gendered Resistance.”

2019-2020 Fellows

Ghadeer Ahmed- Independent Writer and Researcher

Project Title: معوقات وصول النساء إلى عدالة جنسية وإنجابية في مصر – الإجهاض نموذجًا

Heba Alhaji- Independent Researcher

Project Title: الشتائمية كأداة مقاومة جندرية نسوية

Hebatallah Tolba- Freelance Researcher

Project Title: Gender resistance in the face of death: Mediating the gendered labour division in funeral and burial rituals as a form of resistance

Jawaher Channa- Ministery of Education

Project Title: العمل غير المنظم لدى نساء الأحياء المهمشة في تونس: الطبخ كوسيلة مقاومة

Jawida Mansour- Freelance Researcher

Project Title: A micro-emancipation project on a piece of fabric 

Malek Lakhal- Independent Researcher

Project Title: S’organiser après #EnaZeda : Une étude des frictions entre associations féministes et collectifs féministes indépendants

Nay El Rahi- Lebanese American University 

Project Title: Understanding sexual harassment against women in Lebanon

Rana Ahmed- Independent Researcher 

Project Title: The Impact of Ride-Hailing Services on Women's Perceptions of Risk and Everyday Resistance  Strategies in Cairo 

Reeham Mourad- Freelance Researcher

Project Title: Spaces of Resistance: Women Negotiating El-Khalifa Public Spaces and the Everyday life. 

Samaa Elturkey- Independent researcher on sexuality

Project Title: One Vagina and 100 Million Eyes: Power and Resistance in the Realm of Cairene Women’s Sexual Agency 

Mentors

Below are the mentors who will be working with the fellows on their projects during the 2019-2020 cycle of the program.

Asmae Benadada is a Professor at the Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Dhahir Al Mehraz, University of Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah, Fez, Morocco. She specializes in Women’s Studies and Political Sociology. Benadada’s publications include “Women and Politics: Sociological Study of Women Partisan Sectors” (2008). She contributed to a number of edited works, including, “Le mouvement des droits humains des femmes au Maroc: Approche historique et archivistique”  (2015). [The Women’s Human Rights movement in Morocco: A Historical and Archival Approach] (2015) She has also published a number of research papers in national and Arab journals specializing in women’s issues.

Hoda Elsadda is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Cairo University and an activist for women’s rights. She previously held a Chair in the Study of the Contemporary Arab World at Manchester University (2005-2011), and was Co-Director of the Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World in the UK. She was Carnegie Visiting Scholar at Georgetown University in 2014-2015. In 1995, she co-founded the Women and Memory Forum, an Egyptian research organization that focuses on the production of knowledge on gender in Arab cultural history. She is currently the Chairperson of the Board of Governance of the organization. Her research interests are in the areas of gender in Arab cultural history, women’s rights, and oral narratives.

Lamia Moghnieh is a EUME fellow of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation and a former ACSS postdoctoral fellow. Her book project "Psychiatry in Lebanon from the 19th to the 21th century: Madness, Violence and Society" traces the cultural authority of modern psychiatry in Lebanon, through primary analysis of archival documents from the Lebanon Hospital for Mental and Nervous Disorders (popularly known as Asfuriyeh hospital) and ethnographic research on contemporary psychiatric practices.

Islah Jad is an Associate Professor and lecturer on gender issues and politics at the Women's Studies Institute and Cultural Studies Department at Birzeit University. She managed the program from 2008 until 2013 and is acting Director for the year 2021. She is a founding member of the university’s women’s studies MA program and a founding member of the first Ph.D program in Social Sciences at Birzeit. She has written books and papers on the role of women in politics, Palestinian women and the relationships among them, Islam, and NGOs. Dr. Jad is also a consultant on gender issues to the United Nations Development Programme and is co-author of the UN's Arab Development Report on Women's Empowerment and author of three other books. Dr. Jad received her Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London in 2004.