150 years of Arabic print media: Launching the Al-Ahram Digital Archives
Schedule
Fri May 01 2026 at 12:00 pm to 03:00 pm
UTC+10:00Location
UNSW Sydney | Sydney, NS
About this Event
Celebrate the launch of the Al-Ahram Digital Archives at UNSW, a major new acquisition supporting Arabic-language research and teaching at UNSW, featuring a keynote by historian Dr Ifdal Elsaket (Cairo).
Hosted by the School of Humanities and Languages, with thanks to UNSW Library. Lunch will be provided, please register to attend.
Ahlan wa sahlan! أهلاً وسهلاً
This event marks the acquisition of the Al-Ahram Digital Archives, one of the most significant Arabic-language newspaper collections in the world. Founded in Cairo in 1875, Al-Ahram has long served as a central platform for political, cultural, and intellectual life across the Arab world, offering unparalleled insight into 150 years of regional and global history.
The program brings together reflections on the role of archives in shaping research, teaching and public knowledge. It highlights how sustained access to Arabic print culture enables new forms of inquiry across disciplines, from history and media studies to politics, area studies, international studies and cultural studies.
Featuring a keynote by Dr Ifdal Elsaket, Assistant Director Arabic and Islamic Studies at the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo (NVIC), the event situates Al-Ahram within broader historical and scholarly contexts, highlighting the importance of this acquisition for current and future generations of Arabic-language scholarship at UNSW.
Speaker: Dr Ifdal Elsaket
Dr. Ifdal Elsaket is Assistant Director (Arabic and Islamic Studies and Middle East Studies) at the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo. She received her PhD in History and Arabic and Islamic Studies from the University of Sydney. Her research focuses on the history of cinema in Egypt, with particular attention to audiences, the star system, and off-screen dynamics of film production and exhibition. Her work has appeared in the International Journal of Middle East Studies and in The Arab Studies Journal. She co-edited Cinema in the Arab World: New Histories, New Approaches (Bloomsbury, 2023) and is currently completing a book manuscript tentatively titled Movie-Mad in Egypt: Cinema, Empire and Nation, 1896–1939.
(Image credit): Celebrated Egyptian film star Omar Sharif meets pioneering playwright and intellectual Tawfiq el-Hakim in his office at Al-Ahram, where they held a wide-ranging conversation about Sharif’s experience living and working as an actor in the West. The conversation was published over 3 pages in Al-Ahram on 2 January 1977. Source: Al-Ahram Digital Archive.
For further information, please contact [email protected]
Where is it happening?
UNSW Sydney, Room 506, Level 5, UNSW Library, Sydney, AustraliaEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
AUD 0.00
