Nefissa Naguib is Professor of Social Anthropology. Her fieldwork on culturally complex societies has ranged from the Mediterranean basin, to Brazil, Norway, and Spain.
Research Interests
Thematic: Global Moments; Migrations and Diasporas; Humanitarianism and Caregiving; History and Memory; Maritime Lifeworlds; Foodways; Social life of Water, Gardens and Herbarium; Islamicate ecologies and Material Culture.
Regional: Mediterranean, Middle East, Oceans and Seas.
About
Nefissa Naguib's work is inspired by her interest to understand the contemporary world and to understand human and more-than-human interactions. Her book Water, Women and Memory: was about water as an agent of history. The book, framed as a postcolonial ethnography, made an argument about writing that attends to complex historic and social dynamics. With the publication of Interpreting Welfare and Relief in the Middle East (co-edited with Inger Marie Okkenhaug), she addresses the period between 1850 and 2005, a time span of colonization, occupations, wars and conflicts. As a follow-up, Nefissa co-produced War, Women, Welfare in Jerusalem (nominated for Al Jazeera documentary film festival 2010).
Her monograph Nurturing Masculinities: Men, Food and Family in Contemporary Egypt is a reframing of gender in the Middle East. It contributes to the transnational gendered representations of men and women in Arab societies. Her most recent book Reconceiving Muslim Men: Love and Marriage, Family and Care in Precarious Times (co-edited with Marcia C. Inhorn) describes new ways of being men, despite the persistence of old patriarchal norms, and offers new understandings of the meaning of concepts such as care and nurturing and of gender itself.
Nefissa continues to refine her work on history and anthropology, addressing breakthrough events, the politics of memory and human enduring practices. She retains her interest to bridge the gap between anthropology, social history and global migrations of people, things and ideas in her current collaborative projects: 1. Out of the Blue: Migrations and Afterlives of Humans, Seeds and Pigments across the African Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. 2. We Have Given you Gardens: Islamicate Ecologies and Mobilities. 3. Feeling the Heat: Environmental Labor and Care in the Middle East. 4. Al-ARD: The Land We Care For.
Nefissa has advocated multidisciplinarity in her own research and as initiator of international research networks. She is fellow at the CMI Centre on Law and Social Transformation, and part of the research team of YALLA: The politics and aesthetics of everyday life in the Middle East and North Africa and The Oslo Center for Environmental Humanities (OCEH). Nefissa serves on the Scientific Committee of the UNESCO Chair in Education, Gender Equality and Climate Action. Currently she heads the project Feeling the Heat and is a member of AL-Ard project - both funded by UiO environment. Nefissa has served as research leader of Cultures and Politics of Faith Program, and Director of Arab World Program (The Christian Michelsen Institute). She headed the “Muslim Devotional Practice” (The Research Council of Norway),“Everyday Maneuvers” (The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs), and “Enabling Local Voices: The Gender and Development Forum,” (The Norwegian Program for Development, Research and Education).
Courses taught in English
SOSANT 2610 The Anthropology of Food
Sosant 2610 The Anthropology of Contemporary Islam
Sosant 1200 Political Anthropology
SV9104 PhD Research Ethics
ANTH 4030 Advanced Anthropological Methods fall 2020
ANTH 4020 Academic Writing and Project Development
Sosant 9015 Phd Writing and Methods spring 2021
Sosant 2110 Regional Ethnography - Middle East
Sosant 2270 Gender and Kinship
For courses that are also taught in Norwegian please click here.