Egypt, 1960
professor of American literature at Alexandria University

Azza El-Kholy

Azza El-Kholy is professor of American literature and former chair of the department of English at Alexandria University, where she also obtained her doctorate. Until 2017, she was head of the Academic Research Sector of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Her research interests include feminist criticism, women’s issues, nineteenth-century literature translation and the current political state of affairs in Egypt and the region; she is critical of Western interference.

Alongside her academic career, El-Kholy was the director of the Centre for Democracy and Social Peace Studies at the Bibliotheca Alexandria, executive director of the TAFL (Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language) Center and director of the Language and Translation Unit at the Faculty of Arts of Alexandria University.  El-Kholy strives to empower women in the Middle East through education, emphasising the important role women had in the recent social changes in Egypt. She is a consultant for the National Translation Project in Egypt and an editor of the Feminist Press project Women Writing Africa: The Northern Region (2009), giving a voice to the many female writers of Africa.