Dr Farah Aboubakr

IASH Affiliate 2023-25
Dr Farah Aboubakr

Dr Farah Aboubakr is a Lecturer in Arabic at the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Edinburgh. She joined the university in 2013 and since then has been involved in teaching (language and discursive modules), developing materials and course organising across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in the fields of Arabic Language and Literature, Middle Eastern and Translation Studies. Before joining the University of Edinburgh, Dr Farah Aboubakr was Senior Tutor of Arabic at the Language Centre (the University of Manchester); Freelance Translator and Lexicographer on the new edition of the Arabic-English-Arabic Oxford Dictionary (Oxford University Press); and Team Leader of the Senior Intensive Arabic course designed for professional linguists in the UK government as well as Convenor of Culture and Language Teaching of Levantine Dialects (Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese) at Communicaid Ltd. Dr Aboubakr obtained her PhD (2014) in Translation and Intercultural Studies from the University of Manchester. Since then she has been actively engaged in research within the fields of Palestine Studies, Arabic Literature and Popular Culture, Post-colonial, Memory and Cultural Studies. Her journal article, “Peasantry in Palestinian Folktales: Sites of Memory, Homeland and Collectivity” (2017) and monograph The Folktales of Palestine: Cultural Identity, Memory and the Politics of Storytelling (2019) have contributed to the field of cultural studies in conflict zones at a time when there is less scholarship engaging with both memory studies and artistic oral Palestinian productions. Her monograph is the first scholarly work to consider the value of Palestinian folktales (both Arabic and their translations) in reframing the development of cultural identity and post-memory. The study presents new insights into the transcultural shifting position of folktales while also analysing the agency of women storytellers within cultural and social movement studies.

Following successfully obtaining two research grants by the Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL) and the Palestinian American Research Centre (PARC), I am currently working on a new project entitled 'Palestinian Transgressive Voices: Cultural Memory and Performative Arts in the Diaspora and Palestine'. The project focuses on the articulation of artistic forms of Palestinian popular culture in music and theatre in the diaspora and Palestine. The project employs qualitative multi-disciplinary approaches that build on sociology, post-colonial, diaspora and performance studies, as well as memory and culture and communication theories, including spectator and observation studies.