Malak Labib
EUME Fellow of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation
The Fabric of Development: Transnational Expertise and the Politics of Economic Planning in Egypt (1941-1965)
Previous Fellowships: 2018/ 2019
received her doctorate from Aix-Marseille University / Institut de Recherche sur le Monde Arabe et Musulman (2015) and her MA from Sciences Po Paris (2005). Her background is in History and Political Science. Her research interests cover history knowledge and science, political economy and the history of development. In 2018, she was a CEDEJ/CNRS postdoctoral fellow. She taught at Aix-Marseille University, the American University in Cairo, and Cairo University. She has also been active in a number of alternative teaching initiatives in Egypt. From 2008 to 2010, she was a research fellow at the Economic and Business History Research Center of the American University in Cairo. During the academic years 2018/2019 and 2019/2020, she will be a EUME Fellow funded by a Research Fellowship of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation and associated with the Center for Global History at Freie Universität Berlin.
The Fabric of Development: Transnational Expertise and the Politics of Economic Planning in Egypt (1941-1965)
This project explores the socio-technical history of development in Egypt, from the wartime regime of economic management to the first five-year plan (1941–1965). Moving beyond an analysis of developmentalism as the simple expression of technocratic reason and high modernism, my project pays attention to the knowledge networks, institutional mechanisms and social practices that shaped the politics of development. Moreover, the project examines the complex interactions between global and domestic forces in shaping the politics of development planning, and in doing so, it challenges the national confines of Nasserism and seeks to moves beyond nation-centered narratives about political economy and state formation in Egypt and the Middle East. This research draws on oral history interviews, private papers and archival research in Cairo, London, Washington, New York and Berlin.
Alle Fellows
