Randa Aboubakr

Randa Aboubakr is Professor of English and comparative literature at Cairo University, and founder and principal coordinator of Forum for the Study of Popular Culture (FSPC). Author of The Conflict of Voices in the Poetry of Dennis Brutus and Mahmoud Darwish (2004), and co-editor of Spaces of Participation: Dynamics of Social and Political Change in the Arab World with Sarah Jurkiewicz, Hicham Ait Mansour, and Ulrike Freitag (2021), she has several published articles in scholarly and mainstream publications on comparative literature, cultural studies, translation studies, Egyptian colloquial poetry, digital activism, and current affairs. She has translated a number of works of Arabic literature and thought into English and vice versa, including the Arabic translation of Amy Tan’s The Joy-Luck Club, and Tariq Ali’s Protocols of the Elders of Sodom. Her research interests include comparative literature, sub-Saharan African literature, Egyptian colloquial poetry, translation studies, popular culture, and visuality studies. She was fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany (2007-9), and visiting scholar at University of Leiden, the Netherlands (2008), and Zentrum Moderner Orient- Berlin, Germany (2009). She has been guest professor at Seminar for Arabestik and Semitistik at Freie University Berlin, Germany (2007-8) and at the Jagiellonian University of Krakow, Poland (2009). She has received the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Award for Innovative Networking Initiatives in 2012.