Contributors

Ali Yasser Atef is a researcher of the history of documentary film in Egypt with a focus on audiovisual archives and family histories. His research interests are in the anthropology of history, cultural memory, archives, visual anthropology, and movement and migration. After leaving the academic world, he worked as an audiovisual archivist at Cimatheque and is currently working as senior audiovisual researcher at the NADIM Foundation’s family collection and history.

Leen Ghassan is a visual and cultural anthropologist based between Amman and Washington DC. Her current research focuses on wastelanding in late industrial cities in the global south, specifically in Zarqa, Jordan where she is conducting ethnographic research for her dissertation. More generally, Leen is interested in global capital flows, regimes of difference, labor, material culture, and multimodal ethnography. Alongside her academic career, Leen is a part of the programming team at both Darkroom Amman and Asphalt. Leen has a BA in Sociology and Gender Studies from New College of Florida, an MA in Arab Studies from Georgetown University, and is pursuing a PhD in Cultural/Visual Anthropology at George Washington University.

Lina Ramadan is a curator and writer specializing in contemporary and modern Arab art, currently based in Vienna. Her research focuses on post-colonial MENA, women artists, and solidarities. From 2016 to 2022, she served as a curator at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha. Ramadan is the recipient of the 2024-25 Darat al Funun Fellowship, and is currently pursuing a PhD at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna.

Sarah A. Rifky is a writer, curator, and aspiring world-builder with a PhD in art history and theory from MIT. Her research engages cultural infrastructure, global modernism, and the intersections of art and pedagogy in twentieth-century Egypt. She co-founded Beirut, an art initiative in Cairo (2012–2015), and has held curatorial roles at institutions internationally. Rifky teaches and lectures globally; her work is grounded in the principle that every artwork is a school.

Taous Dahmani is a London-based French, British, and Algerian art historian, writer and curator specializing in photography. Dahmani curated the 2022 Louis Roederer Discovery Award at Les Rencontres d’Arles in France. In October 2024, she curated two themed group exhibitions at the Jaou Photo Biennale in Tunis, Tunisia. She joined London College of Communication at University of the Arts London (UCL) as an Associate Lecturer in 2023.