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 Welfare, History and Memory, Maritime Lifeworlds, Food and Water, Gender, Crafting and Materiality.
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 ahrgument 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.
Recently she has gone back to her earlier work on global moments, humanitarianism, migrations and diasporas. She continues to refine her work on history and anthropology, addressing breakthrough events and the politics of memory. Results of this research are evident in her scholarship on following people fleeing wars and the humanitarian aid provided.
Nefissa Naguib retains her interest to bridge the gap between anthropology, social history and global migrations of people and things in her current collaborative projects: 1. In Transit: Migrations and Afterlives across the African Mediterranean, the Suez Canal and Indian Ocean. 2. Garden Keepers: Global Mobilities, Botanical Treasures, Knowledge and Practices. 3. Feeling the Heat: Environmental Labor and Care in the Middle East. 4. Picking up the Pieces: Relief and Everyday Humanitarianism, 1920 – 2025.
Nefissa has advocated multidisciplinarity in her own research and as initiator of international research networks. She is part of the core research team of YALLA: The politics and aesthetics of everyday life in the Middle East and North Africa. 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
ANTH 4030 Advanced Anthropological Methods
ANTH 4020 Academic Writing and Project Development
Sosant 9015 Phd Writing and Methods
For courses that are also taught in Norwegian please click here