Since I was a little girl, if I was ever asked for a vacation recommendation, Egypt, or in Arabic, misr, would escape my mouth. For most this seemed obvious; after all it housed one of the seven wonders of the world: the Pyramids. History lovers would entrance me with a fact about my beloved country that I oftentimes had yet to know. ‘Foodies’ would excitedly exclaim about koshari, a famous street dish combining rice, macaroni, lentils, and chickpeas in a tomato sauce. Nature aficionados too would rave about its beautiful beaches and sunsets.
For those who know me personally, the answer was different. My parents are from Egypt and lived half of their lives there, so they’d assume that my affinity to the country could instead relate to its people, for instance my adorable second cousins. This love of Egypt, in their eyes, could also stem from my familiarity with the culture itself: the foods I’d previously smelt cooking in our kitchen at home or the songs heard within the walls of my home.
Neither of these answers were inherently wrong, in fact truth echoed from varied parts of their clauses. My extended family are, after all, the first people I think of when I think of Egypt. The foods are ones I crave indeed because my mother introduced me to them first. The beauty of its history and landscape too, are not to be overlooked.
There was more to my Egypt though. This I knew already but I previously couldn’t quite configure the words to explain it. I think a pivotal moment for me where I realized the magnificence of misr was through fresh eyes. Several of my friends here at Notre Dame studied abroad in Europe throughout the year, thereby increasing their likelihood of being closer to and therefore visiting the country. Some of them got the chance to visit Egypt; it was hard for me to see if their joy there trumped mine of seeing them there. Even without knowing its people, without the inherent connections to the foods consumed or smells, my friends still ‘felt’ it too: the awe at the vastness of the pryamids, astonishment at the camels and sand just as pictured in the movies they’d once watched, the wonder at the sweetness of the syrup-soaked semolina dessert, basbousa, that they’d picked up at the market for less than a dollars worth.
What I find to be Egypt’s most defining feature is how familiarity can be felt in it without having even an inkling of a relation to the place. And through this I realized that Egypt’s greatest strength lies in its people. Sharing a joke and a smile I’d argue is the best form of human interaction; I think it's nearly impossible to step foot into Egypt without this occurring. Whether it was before you entered the country with airport personnel or in a restaurant where you’ll quickly learn about the family legacies of a recipe, people almost always treat you as if you’ve met before.
Growing up in North Dakota, bridging the gap between this home thousands of miles away and my education was always very important to me. When the opportunity came to learn about economics outside of the Debartolo walls and Jenkins Nanovich floors that I’d become accustomed to, I knew I had to pursue the research. This was made possible by the Center for the Study of Languages and Culture’s FLIP program.
My research was with the American University of Cairo, AUC, Egypt’s top university, housed in New Cairo, a city centered around modern infrastructure and amenities.
Conducting research with the AUC proved to be very insightful for me in actually teaching me what it meant to have an inter-disciplinary and even more so inter-national education. This was evident in every sense of the word: for instance even in communication WhatsApp became my new email when it came to quick spouts of clarity within the research. What I also found to be insightful was that I had to remove my preconceptions on the economies I’d been used to studying rather than Egypt’s. It was so much simpler than I'd thought to get lost in my preconceived notions, immediately forming assumptions on studies at just a moments’ glance.
My research was centered around the construction industry in Egypt, examining how economic fluctuations shifted workers transitions both within and outside of the field. I was initially struck by the supposed ‘nicheness’ of the topic, not realizing how important construction was to Egypt’s economy. For instance, construction makes up roughly fourteen percent of Egypt’s GDP compared to the United States’ modest 4.5 percent. Despite this, the country’s varied economic size and infrastructure led spending on construction to be extremely disproportionate. The United State’s spending on construction is roughly 2 trillion as compared to Egypt’s 50 billion.
The economics of education was an important concept for me amidst my research. I came to understand education as an investment to improve one’s skills and productivity and examined the role of the government in the public provision of education. This was pivotal to my understanding. This industry, and the fluctuation of its workers was heavily due to the lack of education, and inadvertently power, that several construction workers held. What both compelled and devastated me was how central former education and job training were to the workforce dynamics in construction. Unstable employment trajectories were oftentimes due to an absence of formal education or opportunities within their education to move up the ladder.
At the start of my research, my professor had tasked me with seeing the existing literature regarding my research topic. I had honed in on Egypt itself and so when I submitted my paper for revision, I was told that in order to successfully grasp the literature on Egypt I had to compare it to economies across the globe. Therefore, I engulfed myself into studies across Europe and Southeast Asia, learning about Albanian migrants navigating precarious employment or informal Indonesian workers and their respective social protection gaps.
These confirmed the hypothesis I was beginning to understand: without access to education workers oftentimes remain cyclically displaced, pushed to become self-employed or exit construction altogether.
This internship reminded me of why I’d chosen to study economics in the first place. Research isn’t just about data or theory but rather the people themselves. These economic trends, while global, were not generalizable, they met individual lives and their various careers paths and dignity. This experience brought me back to my asl, my origin, as both a daughter and a student.
After all, el-ilm filan nur, knowledge is, after all, light.
Originally published by at cslc.nd.edu on September 03, 2025.