Acknowledgements

The long journey toward this book was only possible with the support and friendship of so many mentors, colleagues and friends. It has been my great privilege to enjoy the teaching, PhD supervision and mentorship ever since of Professor Salwa Ismail. Her insights and example have been an inspiration, and I am profoundly grateful to her for her continuing support. My good fortune continued with my second supervisor, Professor Charles Tripp, whose support, compassion and kindness coached me through the last months of my writing and examination. His insightful comments and invaluable advice helped me bring together the overall themes of my work and push my thinking on the larger issues of the research within the context of Egyptian politics.

I am also most grateful to my two PhD examiners – Professors Deniz Kandiyoti (SOAS) and Maha Abdelrahman (Cambridge) – for their most generous engagement with my work and the very rich and rigorous discussion that was my PhD defense. Their thorough reading of my work and their encouragement pushed me forward and made me think differently about my work. I owe a special debt to Laleh Khalili, who stepped in at various critical moments in the past few years to offer rigorous feedback, warm support and a spontaneous offer of a mock viva that I hold dearly as a precious moment of good fortune in this long journey. I am grateful to many others at School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (SOAS) and beyond who read some of my work over the years, engaged with it and shared with me their thoughts and reflections: Samer Shehata, Laleh Khalili, Marcus Loewe, Steven Heydemann, Amirah al-Haddad, Florian Kohstall, Ilka Eickof, Matthew Nelson, Anthony Hopkin, Anne Magyar, Oscar Molto, Samuel Everett and Matthias Determann.

Different parts of this book were researched and written in a set of brilliant institutions that all provided intellectual stimulation, community and mentorship. I am grateful for my time spent in the Center for Economic, Legal and Social Studies and Documentation (CEDEJ) in Cairo, at the Orient Institute Beirut (OIB), at the Freie Universitaet Berlin (FUB) as a fellow of the EUME project, at the Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies (CNMS) in Marburg, at the Institute of Research and Study on the Arab and Islamic Worlds (IREMAM) in Aix-en-Provence and of course at my current home institution, the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity (MPI-MMG) in Göttingen. Professor Stefan Leder, then director of the OIB, graciously offered his insights, advice and support. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Professors Iman Farag, Cilja Harders, Georges Khalil, Catherine Miller, Bernard Boutiveau, Rachid Ouissa, Jeremy Walton, Megha Amrith and Karen Schoenwaelder, who have all provided generous feedback and guidance at various critical moments. My current director, Professor Steven Vertovec, is a source of invaluable mentorship and generous support and an inspiration of intellectual and institutional leadership.

The fieldwork for this book spanned two decades in the end. I want to thank all those who helped me secure a research permit and connect with teachers, students and administrators. My heartfelt gratitude goes to the students who generously shared their thoughts, hopes and frustrations and to those, in almost every classroom, who spontaneously took on active roles as co-researchers, guiding me on the questions to ask and issues to note down and consider. I am grateful to those who stayed in touch and let me into their lives. I am grateful to the remarkable teachers who shared their thoughts and insights about the schools, the students and the system. It is my pleasure to thank numerous scholars and experts I spoke with and interviewed at various stages of my work and whose work inspired me, including Professors Kamal Naguib, Kamal Mugheith, Hassan Bilawi, Shebl Badran, Ahmed Youssef Saad, Heba Raouf Ezzat, Iman Farag, Wael Gamal and Salma Hussein. Thanks also go to my friends, colleagues and fellow educationalists for their own brilliant work and feedback: Ehaab Abdou, Farida Makar, Motaz Atallah, Mamdouh Fadil and Ghosoun Tawfik.

In every critical moment, marvelous friends and colleagues offered support, encouragement, scholarly feedback and advice, as well as hugs, apples and coffee: Sanaa Alimia, Nadine Abdalla, Rouba Mhaissen, Helena Nassif, Sarah Sabry, Charis Boutieri, Vivian Ibrahim, Naoual Belakhdar, Hanan Badr, Magdalena Sauerbaum, Farhan Samanani, Vanessa Rau, Chris Kofri, Leonie Newhouse, Michalis Moutselos, Serwait Debele, Sabine Mohamed and many more.

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my family who supported me in every way. My late mother had always been a source of inspiration for perseverance and faith in our abilities. Although she frequently wondered why I was not just submitting it, she read and engaged with my thesis, especially in the final stages of the writing. Her loss leaves me without one of my best critics, supporters and interlocutors. I cannot imagine how I could have made it through the last months of teaching and thesis writing in London without the support and warmth of my beautiful younger brother and my sister-in-law. I owe special gratitude to my older brother for reading and engaging with my work, and I still hold dearly his heart-warming and painstaking editorial revisions in the final days before my thesis submission and his continued support and encouragement since. My father, my uncles, aunts and cousins have all shared with me their insights about Egyptian education and helped me with my fieldwork in many different ways. I especially cherish the time I spent with my great-aunt Hoda during my fieldwork in the private schools, her help in arranging interviews, the insights and experiences she shared and her beautiful and youthful spirit. A very special thanks is due to my husband, who has been waiting patiently for the time when I am no longer working on the book. I could not have done it without his support, wisdom and experience, and his careful reading of many versions of different chapters. My two boys interrupted my work in every beautiful way and gave me joy and perspective in different phases of this journey.

I owe my deepest gratitude to the late professor Sam Noumoff, my thesis advisor and mentor since my master’s studies at McGill, to whom I turned for advice on every academic and practical matter I confronted and who was a continuous source of insight, guidance and encouragement. His generosity, wisdom and support for over a decade was an anchor in the worst and best of times and his passing has left a gaping hole that cannot be filled.

The anonymous reviewers of the manuscript offered invaluable feedback, insights and encouragement. A number of research assistants offered excellent and timely support, especially Margharita Cusmano, Heike Sieber and Carolina Reiners. Finally, I want to thank the editorial team at Cambridge University Press: Rachel Imrie, Emily Sharp, Atifa Jiwa, Daniel Brown and especially Maria Marsh, who was a wonderful source of support for the project at its various stages, as well as The Global Middle East series editors, in particular Professor Arshin Adib-Moghaddam for his advice and support.