Northwestern University in Qatar
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Speakers
University of Luxembourg
Thomas Cauvin is the head of the Public History Department at the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH) and director of the Master in Digital and Public History (MADiPH). He is a Luxembourg FNR-ATTRACT Fellow and leads the Public History as the New Citizen Science of the Past (PHACS) project (2020–2025). Former president of the International Federation for Public History, Cauvin is the author of Public History: A Textbook of Practice (Routledge, 2022, second edition), along with several publications and projects in public history.
University of Luxembourg
Frédéric Clavert is the head of the European History Research Group at the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH). An international historian by training, he gradually turned to digital memory studies and is currently interested in the consequences of the emergence of chatbots on our perceptions of the past. He recently co-edited a special issue of Memory Studies Review with Sarah Gensburger (Sciences Po) titled Is AI the Future of Collective Memory?
Head of Programs at African Digital Heritage
Mutanu Kyany’a works at the intersection of technology, cultural heritage, and community, using digital tools to ensure African histories are preserved and shared on local terms. As head of programs at African Digital Heritage, she has led groundbreaking initiatives such as the Gede Digitization Project, Kamirithu Theatre Virtual Reconstruction, and Talking Objects Archive, a decolonial platform reimagining how identities are shared. Her research on digital adoption through the national Skills for Culture program has informed wide-reaching capacity-building efforts. With a background in community development and computer science, Kyany’a’s work centers on community ownership and ensures African heritage remains vibrant, participatory, and rooted in truth.
Moderator
Northwestern University in Qatar
Dahlia El-Zein is an assistant professor of history at Northwestern University in Qatar. She holds a PhD in Middle Eastern and African history from the University of Pennsylvania with a certificate in Africana studies and a master’s in Arab studies from Georgetown University. Her current book project, African Soldiers, Arab Migrants: Race and Empire in French West Africa and the Levant (1920–1960), examines race-making from below, from the perspective of West African colonial soldiers and Lebanese Syrian migrants within the French Empire as it remade both modern-day Senegal and Lebanon in the early to mid-twentieth century. She has published in the Journal of Middle Eastern and North African Migration Studies, the Journal of the Cultural Studies Association, and the Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History.
DATE
Wednesday, October 22, 2025
TIME
1:00 – 2:15 p.m.
LOCATION
Projection Theater