Nehal al-Shamy

Nehal al-Shamy is an MA student at the American University in Cairo (AUC), specializing in Islamic Art and Architecture. She is currently a Forsyth Visiting Graduate Student Fellow at the University of Michigan. Her knowledge of Modern and Ottoman Turkish, in addition to her native language of Arabic, has backed her interest in the art and architecture of the Ottoman period in Egypt. Her current research focuses on Ottoman architecture in Cairo during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the impact of the Ottoman Empire's decentralization on the dynamics of artistic patronage in Egypt as a province, the emergence of the Mamluk Revival style, and the history of the Awliya shrines in Cairo during the Ottoman period.

Over the last few years, Nehal has worked on several research projects related to Islamic art and architecture including at the Rare Books and Special Collections Library (RBSCL) of AUC, at Megawra: a Cairo-based heritage management organization, and at the University of Michigan with Prof. Christiane Gruber. Nehal is a member of the Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online digital educational platform at the University of Michigan where she serves as a Glossary Coordinator. She also works currently as a Research Assistant in the La Fabrique du Caire Moderne project, which is a research project that utilizes Digital Humanities tools and principles to investigate and document the urban history of Cairo during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. "La Fabrique" is a joint project between Duke University (USA), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (France), and Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale (France/ Egypt).