Hoda Elsadda

Hoda Elsadda is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the Faculty of Arts, Cairo University, a position she has held since 2011. She is a founding member and Chair of the Board of the Women and Memory Forum (WMF), a feminist research and advocacy organisation she co-founded in 1995. She previously served as Chair in the Study of the Contemporary Arab World at the University of Manchester (2005–2011) and Co-Director of the Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World (CASAW) in the UK (2006–2011).

In 2013, Elsadda was appointed as a member of the Committee of Fifty (50-Committee) that drafted the Egyptian Constitution of 2014, where she coordinated the Freedoms and Rights Committee. She was a Carnegie Visiting Scholar at Georgetown University (2014–2015), a Leverhulme Fellow (2009–2010), and a Yale World Fellow at Yale University (2003).

She is a member of the editorial boards of several peer-reviewed journals, including Hawwa: Journal of Women of the Middle East and the Islamic World (2017–present), the Journal of Middle East Women's Studies (2015–present), and Critical Times: Interventions in Global Critical Theory (2019–present). She serves on the Board of Governance of the Arab Reform Initiative (2015–present) and the Board of Trustees of the Sawiris Cultural Award (2005–present).

She is a former member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES), the Advisory Committee for the Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Foundation for the Dialogue Between Cultures, a former member of the National Council for Human Rights in Egypt, a former board member of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights and a former member of the Core Team of the Arab Human Development Report. In 1992, she co-founded and co-edited Hagar, an interdisciplinary journal in women's studies published in Arabic. She has written articles and edited books dealing with discourses on gender in modern Arab history, particularly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Her research focuses on gender and culture in the Middle East, Arab women's writing, oral histories, women's creative writing, comparative literature, and Arabic literature and popular culture.

Education B.A. in English Literature, Cairo University, 1978 M.A. in English and Comparative Literature, American University in Cairo, 1982 Ph.D. in English Literature, Cairo University, 1988

Academic positions 2011–present: Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Faculty of Arts, Cairo University 2017–2018: Visiting Scholar, Asfari Institute, American University in Beirut 2014–2015: Carnegie Visiting Scholar, Georgetown University 2005–2011: Chair in the Study of the Contemporary Arab World, University of Manchester 2006–2011: Co-Director, Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World (CASAW), UK 2000–2005: Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Cairo University 1994–1999: Assistant Professor, Department of English, Faculty of Arts, Cairo University 1988–1994: Lecturer, Department of English, Faculty of Arts, Cairo University

Fellowships and awards 2014–2015: Carnegie Visiting Scholar, Georgetown University 2009–2010: Leverhulme Fellowship, United Kingdom 2003: Yale World Fellow, Yale University 1997: Fellow, International Centre for Research on Women, Washington D.C.

Women and Memory Forum Elsadda co-founded the Women and Memory Forum (WMF) in 1995. WMF consists of a group of women scholars, researchers, and activists who strive to produce and disseminate alternative cultural knowledge of women in Arab cultures throughout history and in contemporary society. The group advocates for the promotion of gender as an analytical framework to help combat negative stereotypes of Arab women in the cultural sphere. According to their website, "The long-term objective of WMF's specialized research is to produce and make available alternative cultural information about Arab women that can be used for raising awareness and empowering women."

Egyptian Constitution of 2014 In 2013, Elsadda was appointed as a member of the Committee of Fifty (50-Committee), the body tasked with drafting the Egyptian Constitution of 2014. Within the committee, she served as coordinator of the Freedoms and Rights Committee. The constitution was approved by national referendum in January 2014.

Selected publications Books

Edited books

Book chapters

Articles