Lucia Sorbera

Dr Lucia Sorbera is Associate Professor in Arab, Islamic and Middle East Studies at the University of Sydney, where she serves as Chair of Discipline of Arabic Language and Cultures, co-coordinator of the Cluster on Conflict and Cooperation in the Vere Gordon Childe Center, and a core member of the Powerful Stories Network. She works on West Asian, and North African colonial and postcolonial history, with a focus on women, gender and sexuality.

As a student, she lived and studied in Italy, in Lebanon and in Egypt, until she graduated at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice, where she was awarded a PhD in Arabic and Islamic Studies in 2006. Her PhD Thesis on the History of Egyptian and Italian women’s movements in the interwar period was awarded by the Italian Society of Women’s Historians the first award as the best thesis in women and gender history in 2007. Prior to joining the School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Sydney in 2011, she was an adjoint professor at the Universities of Macerata, Milano La Statale, and Verona.

She has been a Visiting Professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Bologna University (2023); Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the CUNY Graduate Center (2022); Fernand Braudel Senior Research Fellow at the European University Institute, Florence (2021), and the Kathleen Fitzpatrick Visiting Fellow in the Laureate Program in International History at the University of Sydney (2017).

Dr Sorbera published extensively on the political and cultural history of modern and contemporary Egypt, and on contemporary Arab cultural productions. Among her books: Biography of a Revolution. The Feminist Roots of Human Rights in Egypt (University of California Press, 2025); Sex and Desire in Muslim Cultures. Beyond Norms and Transgression from the Abbasids to the Present. Day (with Serena Tolino and Aymon Kreil, Bloomsbury, London, 2021), Contending Legitimacy in World Politics, (with Bronwyn Winter, Taylor and Francis, London, 2018), and Modernità arabe. Nazione, narrazione e nuovi soggetti nel romanzo egiziano, (with Lorenzo Casini and Mariaelena Paniconi, Mesogea, Messina, 2013), alongside a conspicuous number of book chapters and journal articles.

She is currently extending the scope of her research on the history of women, gender, and sexuality from the Arab world to sub Sahelian Africa, specifically Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana, where she is working with refugee artists, and with local NGOs on archives, memory and trauma related to forced displacement.

Dr Sorbera combines her academic activity with public engagement, especially with the publishing industry, where she serves on several editorial boards, such as the book series on Women and Gender History published by the Italian Society of Women Historians and Viella, the Journal of Middle East Women Studies, ArabLit, Journal of Arabic Literature, and the Journal Protest. She regularly participates as an invited speaker at literary and film festivals, and from 2016 to 2023 she served in the editorial committee of the Torino Book Fair, where she co-curated the section Arab Souls, on Arabic Literature and Cultures.