The “Digital Cairo” sub-project of La fabrique du Caire moderne (Ifao-InVisu-Duke U) received a collaborative research award from the National Endowment for the Humanities for the period between 1 October 2022 and 30 September 2024. The sub-project’s lead investigator is Adam Mestyan (Duke University), and co-directors are Mercedes Volait (CNRS, InVisu) and Hugh Cayless (Duke University Libraries).
The project includes teams of Egyptian, American, and Turkish students, who work together with experienced researchers. They study track the urban transformation of Cairo during the nineteenth and early twentieth century using Ottoman-era Arabic and Ottoman Turkish newspapers. They create a born-digital tool (an XML TEI database) and an HTML website; the co-directors also publish research articles and possibly a book. The project also includes teaching TEI XML in Arabic (and possibly in Turkish), and experimenting with possibilities of an Arabic ODD in XML.
Team members:
Adam Mestyan (Duke University)
Mercedes Volait (CNRS, INHA)
Hugh Cayless (Duke University)
Ghislaine Alleaume (CNRS, IREMAM, professor emerita)
Sarah Fathallah Garaa (‘Ayn Shams U, graduate student)
Rezk Nori (Center for Contemporary Egyptian History)
Ahmed Kamal (Centre of Documentation of Islamic and Coptic Antiquities)
Nour Kanaan (Duke U, undergraduate student)
Clara Harms (Duke U, undergraduate student)
Arif Erbil (Duke U, graduate student)
Abram Smith (Duke U, graduate student)
Hüseyin Sağlam (Istanbul U, graduate student)
Abdulrahman El Taliawi (independent researcher, Cairo)
Othmane Echchabi (Duke U, undergraduate student)
Fatemah Almahana (Duke U, graduate student)
Hiba Laabadli (Duke U, undergraduate student)
Mahmoud Zaki (Duke U, undergraduate student)
