Nehal Elmeligy (she/her) is a PhD Candidate in Sociology and has completed a graduate in minor in Gender and Women’s Studies. She holds an MA in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from the University of Cincinnati, Ohio and a BA in English from Ain Shams University in Cairo, Egypt. Her general research is concerned with investigating contemporary waves of the Egyptian feminist movement and activism on the ground and online, everyday forms of feminist resistance, violence against women in urban settings, the role of the state in supporting and suppressing feminist activism, and the role of emotions in feminist activism and violence against women.
Her dissertation engages with scholarship on publics and counterpublics, feminist activism in the Global South and the Arab world, and transnational feminist thought. She examines the contentious relationship between the state and contemporary emergent feminist social media groups, questioning how these feminist groups create counterpublics, via their feminist knowledge production in Arabic and English, under authoritarian regimes. She also examines how these groups campaign for new laws that aim protect women against violence, and how their knowledge is received by Egyptian society.
Nehal has published three peer-reviewed articles. “Making a Scene: Young Women’s Cairo’s Feminist Social Nonmovement” was published in the Journal of Resistance Studies in a special issue on the decade anniversary of the Arab Spring. “Airing Egypt’s Dirty Laundry: BuSSy’s Storytelling as Feminist Social Change” was published in Gender & Society. This article received the 2023 honorable mention for the Distinguished Paper Award by the Sociology of Sexualities Section at the American Sociological Association and was the 2022 winner of the Graduate Student Paper Award of the Sociology of Emotions Section at the American Sociological Association. Finally, “On Chaos, Disruption, and Women in Public Space: Cairo’s Street Situation and the Murder of the “Maadi Girl” and the Single “Al Salam Doctor,” was published in both English and Arabic in the Civil Society Review.
Her dissertation project was recognized twelve times. She has won awards, fellowships, and grants from the Departments of Sociology, Gender and Women’s Studies, the Women and Gender in Global Perspectives Program, the Illinois International Office, and the National Women’s Studies Association. Notable examples are the 2022 Marianne A. Ferber Award for most outstanding Gender and Women’s Studies proposal, the 2024 National Women’s Studies Association Graduate Scholarship, and the Fall 2024 Catherine C. and Bruce A. Bastian Fellowship.
Research Interests: Resistance Studies, Sociology of Emotions, Sociology of Gender, Sociology of Race, Race and Ethnicity, Social Movements, Transnational Feminism, Transnational Sociology, and Queer Theory.
(Tentative) Dissertation Title: “Emergent Publics in the Time of Unpredictable Crackdowns: The Impact of Online/Offline Feminist Counterpublics in Contemporary Egypt”
Dissertation Advisor: Dr. Ghassan Moussawi (Sociology & Gender and Women’s Studies)
Dissertation Committee: Dr. Zsuzsa Gille (Sociology); Dr. Anna-Maria Marshall (Sociology); Dr. Atef Said (Sociology, University of Illinois, Chicago); Dr. Shereen Abouelnaga (English, Cairo University, Egypt)
