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I'm a graduate student at the University of North Texas, working on my Master's degree at the moment. Principally my interest is on the formation of national identity within the late Ottoman Empire of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This interest is part of a wider interest towards the formation of national identities and of nationalism in general.

With regards to my Master's Thesis, I am studying the connections between European perceptions of Egypt and the emerging Egyptian nationalistic view towards what constituted the territory of "Egypt." From my cursory research to the solidification of the Egyptian state under Muhammad Ali and his dynastic successors was that the core of the Egyptian state included both Lower Egypt, Cairo, and the northern reaches of Upper Egypt. The campaigns of Ali's immediate Mamluk predecessors and of Ali himself consolidated Cairene rule over Upper Egypt, the Sa'id​ . The conquest of Muhammad Ali saw the incorporation of the Sinai, the Hejaz, Crete, and the Sudan into his domains. Near the end of Ali's rule, Egyptian arms captured (albeit temporarily) Palestine and Syrian, with Egyptian military victories deep in the heart of Anatolia.

Ali's successors would see most of this empire dissolve as a result of Western pressure. Nonetheless, Egyptian arms continued to ​march down south on the Nile, culminating to Egyptian expeditions to the Great Lakes regions of Equatorial Africa. The 'Urabi Revolt and the subsequent British rule over Egypt would see the Egyptian boundaries rule over a region nominally consistent with her modern-day borders, as well as classical depictions of ancient Egypt's might ending at the First Cataract, near modern-day  Aswan.

​Ultimately, my research aims to focus what role - if any - British demarcation of Egyptian territory was colored by both classical representation of Egypt as well as Egyptian internalization of such coloration.

​As I am still learning Arabic, my focus is on the British administrative