The discussion will be moderated by Cecelia Lynch, political science professor and director of the Center for Global Peace & Conflict Studies, and Karen Leonard, anthropology professor and acting department chair. Panelists are:

Julia Elyachar, assistant professor of anthropology, who studies the social, cultural and political economy of urban Egypt. Her Markets of Dispossession: NGOs, Economic Development and the State in Cairo was co-winner of the American Ethnological Association’s first book prize, in 2007. She has published articles on Egypt in American Ethnologist, Public Culture and other journals in the U.S. and Europe.

Christine Hegel-Cantarella, assistant research specialist in the anthropology department and UCI’s Institute for Money, Technology & Financial Inclusion. Her research centers on contracts, litigation and court reform in contemporary Egypt, with an emphasis on Port Said. Current publications include an article in Law, Culture & the Humanities and a chapter in the edited volume Islam: Women, Divorce and Marriage in the Middle East.

Selim H. Shahine, Ph.D. ’06, a UCI lecturer and sociocultural anthropologist who researches Egyptian elites. He conducted ethnographic fieldwork among members of Egypt’s former royal family, which was deposed in the 1952 military coup that put the currently embattled regime in power.