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Caitlin McDonald

Email: mcdonald.caitlin@gmail.com CV available on request.
 

School: College of Social Sciences and International Studies
Department: Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies

• Photo: spontaneous dancing at the Cairo Jazz Festival, November 2008.
• LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/caitlinmcdonald
• Permanent link to my thesis, Belly Dance and Glocalisation: Constructing Gender in Egypt and on the Global Stage: http://hdl.handle.net/10036/119585.  The body of the thesis is under embargo while I seek publication opportunities.  The abstract and table of contents are available to view. 
  

The heart of my PhD research focused on globalization and gender issues in the Middle East.  To study this, I looked at the way international communities use technology to form connections across national and regional boundaries.  I led an ethnography of the global Egyptian dance community that required extended fieldwork in Egypt, the United States, and Britain.  This involved reaching out to new participants via Facebook, examining specialist social networking sites like bhuz.com, and looking at how participants interacted in the online environment Second Life.  In a more abstract sense, the whole PhD concerned the way people all over the globe use imagination to shape their lives, and the internet-focused portion was about the way technologies provide novel methods to imagine the self and the relationship between that self and the world.  See the "Research" tab for further details.

I have blogged for the Independent on gender issues in the Middle East.  I have been a nationally promoted blogger on the Skirt! magazine website in the United States since 2008.  I was invited to guest blog for To Be Shouted in April, 2011.  I was an Editor's Choice Semifinalist for Trazzler's "On the Road" writing contest in October, 2010.  Before commencing my fieldwork in Cairo I served for two years as research students' representative for both the IAIS and HuSS Staff-Student Liaison Committees, and I attended IAIS staff meetings in the same capacity.  I hold two bronze medals in Seishen Mizu Ryu Tatakai Jutsu (jiu jitsu) as well as managing the Exeter City club's newsletter from November 2009-September 2010.

I graduated in July 2011.   Before beginning my PhD in Arab and Islamic Studies as part of the 1+3 programme, I completed my MA in Gender and Identity in the Middle East under the supervision of Dr. Nadje Al-Ali.  I completed my BA in 2005 at Sarah Lawrence College in New York after leaving high school early to attend Simon's Rock College of Bard in Massachusetts, a college designed for students who wish to commence higher education at a younger age than what is conventional in the United States.