The Reconstruction of War-torn Communities Working Group
The working group on the reconstruction of war-torn communities developed a five-year plan and oversaw publication of the group’s first book based on selected contributions to its inaugural workshop in May 2001. Planned activities include five annual workshops and several panels that will address a wide academic audience and serve as launching grounds for publication, feedback, and identification of new scholars. The first of these workshops, held in Cairo in October 2001, was on reconstruction and transnationalism and included 20 African, Arab, and international researchers. The working group has developed multi-faceted collaborative relations within the American University in Cairo with a number of interdisciplinary research programs, including the Institute for Gender and Women Studies, the Office of African Studies, and the Forced Migration and Refugees Studies Program.
Arab Families Working Group
The working group on Arab families has embarked on a challenging, cutting-edge project of long-term collaborative and comparative research on Arab families in Egypt, Lebanon, and Palestine. The group is setting an agenda for future research and pioneering collaborations between scholars, policymakers, and planners. Two research project groups have been organized: Arab families and public discourse, and Arab families and diasporas. Empirical research will lead to a series of volumes on the Arab family. A core group meeting was held to discuss plans for the next five years. Research activities began in early 2003. (more)
Culture and Education Working Group
The working group on culture and education, coordinated by education specialist Linda Herrera, is using the rich classroom observation data collected by the 1999 Adolescence and Social Change in Egypt (ASCE) survey as well as new ethnographic materials to address critical education reform issues. A multi-disciplinary team of researchers and practitioners from various national education policy centers, international research institutes, and universities throughout Egypt are working on issues facing young people from the perspectives of public policy, theory, and practice. The group provided a forum for discussion of the culture of the classroom, which will serve as the focal point from which to investigate a range of pressing educational and social issues such as gender and class equity in education, democratic values, the quality of schooling, teachers as role models, identity formation, social inclusion and exclusion (i.e., issues of tolerance), and the civic participation of young people.
