Image: Cairo, March 1965. Don Christie via Wikimedia Commons. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Hussein’s project examines the central role of Cairo in the global history of decolonization, highlighting how the city emerged as a major hub for pan-African and Afro-Asian intellectual exchange and international political mobilization. Through the study of transcontinental conference networks, material and print cultures, Arabic-language scholarship on Africa, and previously overlooked institutional networks based in Cairo, the research reconstructs the transnational intellectual and institutional configurations that took shape in the Nasserist era during the early decades of Egypt's independence from British-backed monarchy. During her research trip supported by the Mosafer fellowship, Hussein conducted additional archival research and oral history interviews in Egypt, and also presented her findings at three international conferences in Senegal, Morocco, and France.