IAS Book Launch: Biography of a Revolution

ABOUT THE BOOK
In January 2011, the eyes of the world turned to Egypt, where one of the most significant popular uprisings of the twenty-first century was unfolding. Fifteen years on, in a world at war and in the midst of a profound crisis of human rights and international law, it may be tempting to treat that moment as distant history. Biography of a Revolution argues that we cannot afford to.

At the centre of this book are women human rights defenders — the activists, organisers, and survivors whose work made the Egyptian revolution possible. Lucia Sorbera's central argument is both historical and political: feminism opened the space for revolution. Tracing the long genealogy of Egyptian feminist organising across the twentieth century, she shows how women's resistance to both state and domestic violence created the political conditions for 2011. Far from passive victims of history, these women were its architects.

The book also questions how such stories can be told. What does a feminist research methodology add to the experience of working in a repressive environment? Is it possible to "work with," rather than "write about," the subjects of the stories we narrate?

At a moment when the gains of human rights movements worldwide are under threat, looking closely at these historical experiences feels less like an act of remembrance than one of preparation. The past of Egyptian women human rights defenders may yet prefigure our future.

Biography of a Revolution. The Feminist Roots of Human Rights in Egypt was published by University of California Press in May 2026. 

ABOUT THE EVENT 
The author, Lucia Sorbera, will present her book before theatre and performance scholar, Nesreen N. Hussein (University of Bern), and author Yasmin El-Rifae (Birkbeck, University of London) will respond. The evening will be hcaired by Estella Carpi (Department of Risk and Disaster Reduction, UCL).