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Malak Labib received her doctorate from Aix-Marseille University / Institut de  Recherche sur le Monde Arabe et Musulman (2015) and her MA from Sciences Po Paris (2005). Her background is in History and Political Science. Her research interests cover the history of knowledge and science, political economy and the history of development. In 2018, she was a CEDEJ/CNRS postdoctoral fellow. She taught at Aix-Marseille University,  the American University in Cairo, and Cairo University. She has also been active in a number of alternative teaching initiatives in Egypt. From 2008 to 2010, she was a research fellow at the Economic and Business History Research Center of the American University in Cairo. During the academic year 2018/2019, she is a EUME Fellow funded by a research fellowship of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation and associated with the Center for Global History at Freie Universität Berlin. What was intriguing to you when you were a child? What is it that you always wanted to know about the world?I have always been intrigued byquestions of norm and difference, majority and minority. I was raised in an Egyptianupper-class Coptic family, where religion was not prominent. Yet, I understoodthe significance of religious difference early on, in primary school to be moreprecise. I was the only Christian student in class and I was always asked to goout of the classroom during the religion class, there was the “us” and the“they”. At the same time, in terms of social class, although I also belonged toa minority – &#160;in numerical terms – &#160;the power dynamics were clearly different. Basically,I think my socio-economic as well as cultural background (I come from a leftistfamily) made the questions of difference and the production of differenceimportant for me. How do you explain your current research project to your students?When I try to explain my research projectto students or friends in Egypt, I start with the present day. For many Egyptians, the 2011 revolution was notonly an uprising against Mubarak, but also against the postcolonial state as itemerged since 1952. At the same time, the Nasserist “social contract” and modelof state interventionism have occupied a central place in the people’s politicaland economic imaginary. Some have even seen in the policies of the currentregime – for instance in the launching of large projects and in the extensionof the army’s role in the economy –, they have seen this as an attempt torebuild a developmental state. This analysis is highly debatable, I think. But mypoint here is that despite these constant references, our knowledge of thehistory of economic institutions, policy debates and social practices of theera of state-led development is quite incomplete. Much of the current commonunderstanding of the 1950s and 1960s is based on the idea of a monolithic andcentralized system, that supposedly contrasts with the free market economy thatpreceded it and succeeded it. I think there is a need to question suchdichotomies, and I am not the first to do so. There is also a need to reflecton the complex ways in which the forms of economic management and socialengineering of this era have shaped our present. Which stations of your academic journey were particularly formative to you?I can think of many formative moments.My undergraduate studies in France marked me in important ways. I think inparticular of the year I spent at the “Ecole préparatoire”, which offered anacademic immersion in the Humanities (Literature, Philsophy, History). It was duringthis year that I read Michel Foucault for the first time. It was Surveilleret Punir (Discipline and Punish) and this book was a revelation to me. Itwas also during these years that I acquired the skills of academic writing. My dissertation years were also veryformative, although in a different way. When I started a PhD in Middle Eastern Historyat Aix-en-Provence University, after a B.A. and an M.A. in Political Science, Ihad no specific training in History, and in the French system, there is no courseworkas part of PhD programs. This was quite challenging, and at times difficult, butit left me with a large margin of autonomy and personal choice in terms of howto carry out my research. Which publications or academic events (workshops, conferences, lecture series…) did inspire you recently?I am currently reading Hanan Hammad’sfascinating book Industrial Sexuality: Gender, Urbanization and SocialTransformation inEgypt, which focuses on the daily lives of men andwomen workers in the Delta city of al-Mahalla al-Kubra, in the first half ofthe Twentieth century. The book analyzes the transformation of genderidentities and sexualities, in a context of rapid industrialization andurbanization. It also provides insights into the social relations in and aroundthe factory: the dynamics on the shop floor, the tensions between ruralmigrants and urban dwellers, the forms of state surveillance of labor, etc. Inthat sense, it is really innovative among works of labor history on Egypt. Part of what I try to do in my current researchproject is to examine economic planning “in practice”, and this has led me tolook into the history of the Egyptian Iron and Steel company. So, in thisregard, Hammad’s book is particularly relevant for my current work, although myresearch perspective is quite different from hers. How is it to do research in Germany?I find this experience extremely enriching. I am currently affiliated both with EUME and the Center for Global History of the Freie Universität. And as someone who was mainly trained as a Middle East historian, I am benefiting a lot from discussions around global history and from exchanges with colleagues working on other geographical areas. Berlin is also very rich in academic and cultural events, and in the past six month, I have attended some very exciting conferences and workshops, like for instance the symposium “Revisiting Archive in the Aftermath of Revolution”, or the workshop “Africa in Global Intellectual History.” Finally, I am lucky to be surrounded by a fantastic group of EUME Fellows, from whom I have a lot to learn. Citation: “I have always been intrigued by questions of norm and difference, majority and minority.” – 5in10 with Malak Labib, in TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research, 11.03.2019, https://trafo.hypotheses.org/18141