Alaa’s dissertation, entitled “Convicts on the Nile: Prisons and the Making of Modern Egypt,” is a cultural, political, and social history of Egypt told through the colonial penal system. It is based on research in four continents, using a wide range of primary sources in Arabic, English, French, and Ottoman Turkish. It places prisons and punishment at the heart of the struggle for national liberation and outlines how ordinary Egyptians contested colonial rule and influenced discourses of citizenship, gender, and race.

Currently a Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellow, Alaa’s research has been supported by the American Research Center in Egypt, the Graduate School of Arts and Science Mellon Dissertation Research Fellowship, and the Sakip Sabanci Center for Turkish Studies, among others. Before Columbia, Alaa worked for the International Organization for Migration in Yemen and at the Cairo Peacekeeping Center. He obtained his BA at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.