Ilka Eickhof works at the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo as a PhD researcher and lecturer. Until 2014 she was a research associate and lecturer at the Center for Middle Eastern and North African at Freie University Berlin. She has a Master’s Degree in Islamic Studies, Sociology and Modern History (Berlin, Damascus and Istanbul), worked at the 'Haus der Kulturen der Welt' in Berlin for two years and has published a book about Anti-Muslim racism in Germany (2010) and about the power of humour and laughter regarding sexism, racism, and classism (2014). Other recent publications include 'Graffiti, Capital and Deciding what's Inappropriate' (mada masr April 2015), 'My friend, the Rebel. Structures and Dynamics of Cultural Foreign Funding in Cairo' (2014) or 'Old Orientalism in new Dresses? On the Representation of Women in the so‐called Arab Spring' (2013). She focuses her research and teaching on Postcolonial Critique, Cultural Studies, and politics of representation. In her dissertation she looks at European cultural institutions in Cairo in the past four years, and the structures and frameworks of intervention and regulation in the cultural field (topics include European foreign politics, cultural politics as soft power tools, cultural funding and 'development aid', the sociology of the gift, etc.).

ilka.eickhof@fu-berlin.de