Karin Ahlberg

Academic interests

Egypt, the Middle East and the Mediterranean | More-than-human studies, Lessepsian/marine species migration, the Suez Canal | Politics of tourism, tourist workers, statecraft, national image curation, marketing and the politics of information | Revolutions, aftermaths and anthropological knowledge production

Courses taught

• Spring 2022: SOSANT2530 – Development
• Spring 2022: SOSANT2270 – Contemporary studies in kinship and gender
• Fall 2021: ANTH4010 – Advanced Anthropological Theory
• Fall 2021: SOSANT1000 – Innføring i sosialantropologi
• Spring 2021: SOSANT2110 – Regional Ethnography: Middle East

Background

Karin Ahlberg is a social anthropologist, who received her PhD from SOAS, University of London in 2017. Before joining SAI, she held a Postdoctoral Fellowship with the Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago and worked as a reserchers and lecturer the Department of Anthropology, Stockholm University. Her PhD thesis examines entanglements between tourism, statecraft and national image curation in the context of contemporary Egypt. She collected material for the thesis during twenty months in Cairo in the aftermath of the 2011 Revolution.

Ahlberg’s new research project explores the afterlife of the Suez Canal and Lessepsian migration from a more-than-human perspective. In parallel, she is turning her dissertation into a book manuscript with the title Brand New Egypt.