Professor Maha Abdelrahman

I am a professor of Development Studies and Middle East Politics with a background in political sociology. I have two major research areas: The first is the politics of state-civil society relations and the role of social movements in social and political transformation. I have published widely on civil society politics, protest movements and uprisings in the Middle East. My first book (2004), Civil Society Exposed: The Politics of NGOs in Egypt, critically analyses how aid and development discourses and practices depoliticize the progressive potential of civil society. The book is based on my PhD dissertation which won the prize for the best PhD in International Development from the Institute of International Development in Amsterdam. In Egypt’s Long Revolution: Protest Movements and Uprisings (2015), I trace a decade of networked activism which culminated in the January 2011 uprising in Egypt, debunking long-held assumptions about the dynamics of civil society and social movements in the region.

My second research interest focuses on the digitalization of development interventions and how digital apps operate as political technologies which intersect with neoliberal politics and business models to create value for capital in a Big Data society. My article ‘Trauma apps and the making of the “smart” refugee’ in Environment and Planning D: Society and Space (2023) reveals how ‘mental prints’ of trauma are extracted from millions of refugees who are expected to emerge from their traumatic experience as digitally connected, resilient subjects. I am currently working on a project examining the rise of the digital FemTech industry in the Arab region from a critical feminist perspective.

Selected Publications:

(2023) Trauma apps and the making of the ‘smart’ refugee. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 41(3), 513–528.

(2022) A Crisis Like No Other? COVID-19, Capitalism and the Politics of Crisis Narratives Development and Change 53(6) Special Issue Editor

(2022) The indefatigable worker: From factory floor to Zoom avatar. Critical Sociology, 48(1), 75-90.

(2015) Egypt’s Long Revolution: Protest Movements and Uprisings London: Routledge

(2004) Civil Society Exposed: The Politics of NGOs in Egypt, London: I.B. Tauris, New York: St. Martins/Macmillan

Blog Post (2022) ‘From gallons to gigabytes: China’s Digital Silk Road and the Arab World’.