Medical Anthropology in Arabic Speaking Societies

Mustafa Abdalla is the co-initiator and co-founder (with Lamia Moghnieh, University of Copenhagen), the working group "Medical Anthropology in Arabic Speaking Countries." Performing under the Arab Council for the Social Sciences, ACSS, the working group is composed of Arabic speaking Medical Anthropologists working in the Arab world. The group aims to create discussion, collaboration and knowledge production on Ethnography and Medicine in Arab majority societies. The project addresses and scrutinizes existing concepts, ethnographic tools and gaps on medicine advanced by knowledge practices and productions of ethnographic disciplines like anthropology. It aims at creating innovative regional and local collaborations as well as collective research projects that contribute to the ethnographic knowledge production of medicine, health and disease in Arab majority societies. The Working Group aims to create and maintain a network of medical ethnographers and scholars working in the Arab world.

Oct 2019 - Feb 2022
Research Associate at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology FU Berlin
Head of Postdoc Research Project ""Productive Pathologies II: The Professionalization of Patients and Disease in the Age of Biological Citizenship"

April 2018 - September 2018
Research Associate at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology FU Berlin

September 2015 - December 2017
Research Associate at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology FU Berlin
Head of Postdoc Research Project ""Productive Pathologies I: The Professionalization of Patients and Disease in the Age of Biological Citizenship"

April - August 2015
Research Associate at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology FU Berlin

2011
Doctor degree at the Free University of Berlin
Title of thesis: "The production of Medical Expertise in Egypt: historical background and contemporary challenges"
Supervisors:: Prof. Dr. Ute Luig; Prof. Dr. Kamran Asdar Ali (Austin, Texas); Date of Disputation: 04. 07. 2011

Summer 2018

"Methods of Social and Cultural Anthropology" (BA course)
Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology - FU Berlin

Summer 2015

"Introduction to Medical Anthropology" (engl.) (MA course)
Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology - FU Berlin

Summer 2014

"Peoples and Cultures of the Middle East" (engl.)  (BA course)
Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology - FU Berlin

Books

2014 (with D. Dias Barros and M. Berthet, eds.) Spaces in Movement. New Perspectives on Migration in African Settings (Topics in Interdisciplinary African Studies. Band 35). Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

2007 Beach Politics: Gender and Sexuality in Dahab. Cairo Papers in Social Sciences 27. Cairo, Egypt: The American University in Cairo Press.

Journal Articles

2018 "Transfigurative Experiences of Sickness. Medical Regimes, Disease Commodification, and Professional Patients in Egypt." In: Janina Kehr, Hansjärg Dilger and Peter van Eeuwijk (eds.) Special issue "Transfigurations of Health and the Moral Economy of Medicine: Values, Infrastructures and Subjectivities." Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 143 (1).

2018 (with Nasima Selim, Lilas Alloulou, Mohamed Alaedden Halli, Seth M. Holmes, Maria Ibiß, Gabi Jaschke and Johanna Gonçalves Martín) "Coming Together in the So-Called Refugee Crisis. A Collaboration Among Refugee Newcomers, Migrants, Activists and Anthropologists in Berlin." In: Anthropology in Action 25 (3): 34-44.

2015 "Friendly Skulls, Mechanical Bodies: Encounters with Cadavers in a Medical School in Egypt." In: Medical Anthropology: Cross-Cultural Studies in Health and Illness 34 (5): 407-424.

2015 "Medical Students’ Experiences with Professional Patients in Egypt." In: Roberta Raffaetà and Mark Nichter (eds.) Special issue "Negotiating Care in Uncertain Settings and Looking Beneath the Surface of Health Governance Projects" Anthropology in Action 22 (1): 27-35.

Book Chapters

In print: "Diseased Bodies, Empowered Souls: Economic Scarcities and Disease Professionalism in Egypt." In: Ilka Eickhof and Carl Rommel (eds.) Making it Work: Economies of the Male Body in Egypt. Cairo and New York: The American University in Cairo Press.

2020 "'Dites au Revoir Maintenant:' Maladie, Mort et Stigmatisation à l’Epoque du COVID-19." In: Shigehisa Kuriyama, Ota de Leonardis, Carols Sonnenschein and Ibrahima Thioub (eds.) COVID-19, Tour du Monde. Institut d’Etudes Avancees de Nantes. Paris: Edition Manucius.

2015 "Challenged Masculinities: Men on the Margins of Tourism and Sexuality." In: Gul Ozyegin (ed.) Gender and Sexuality in Muslim Cultures. London: Ashgate, 37-54.

2014 "Masculinity on Shifting Grounds: Emasculation and the Rise of the Islamist Political Scene in Post-Mubarak Egypt." In: Helen Rizzo (ed.) Masculinities in Egypt and the Arab World: Historical, Literary, and Social Science Perspectives. Cairo and New York: American University in Cairo Press.

2014 (with D. Dias Barros) "The Resonance of Travel in a Dogon Village – Pilgrimage Experience, Mobility and Social Change in Songho, Mali." In: Mustafa Abdalla, Denise Dias Barros and Marina Berthet (eds.) Spaces in Movement. New Perspectives on Migration in African Settings (Topics in Interdisciplinary African Studies. Band 35). Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, 57-78.

Online Publications

2015 "Productive Pathologies: Poverty, Biovalue and Commodification of Disease in Urban Egypt." Blog Medizinethnologie: Körper, Gesundheit und Heilung in einer globalisierten Welt.

Other Publications

2003 "The Social Construction of Sexuality, Risk and Reproductive Health Among Young Men in Dahab." ITH- Tagungsberichte, Linz, Austria.

2003 "Desire Across Boundaries: Marriage and Sexuality in a Transnational Context." Conference proceedings, 10th Annual Research Conference: Globalization Revisited: Challenges and Opportunities. The American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt.