Dr. Chihab El Khachab
Dr. Chihab El Khachab is an Egyptian social anthropologist and writer specializing in visual and media anthropology with a focus on Egyptian cinema, popular culture, humour, technology, and bureaucracy.
His first project consisted of an ethnographic study of the Egyptian film industry, with particular attention to labour dynamics, production practices, and the impact of digital technologies on filmmaking. Based on doctoral fieldwork in Cairo between 2013 and 2015, he examined how everyday labour and technological use can explain the process of cinematic creation as well as how filmmakers conceive and manage their unpredictable future.
He has held academic positions in diverse colleges at the University of Oxford and Cambridge and is currently an Associate Professor in Visual Anthropology and a Fellow of Wolfson College at the University of Oxford.
His current project combines historical and ethnographic methods to examine everyday bureaucratic practices at the Ministry of Culture (MOC) in Egypt. Based on archival and ethnographic fieldwork in Cairo between 2018 and 2019, he explores how MOC bureaucrats were instrumental in crafting a coherent state-idea through a range of writings, images, and administrative documents after national independence in 1952. He is also interested in exploring how the concept of “culture” is conceived as an object of government in this institutional setting.
He has an extensive list of academic publications and essays on Egyptian politics and culture in English and Arabic, and write a regular column on philosophical concepts in Arabic on the literary website Boring Books. His first book has been published in 2021 by The American University in Cairo Press, and represents the first ethnographic study of the Egyptian film industry.
Links:
University of Oxford Personal Page
