Copyright

Linda Herrera

Published On

2025-11-17

Page Range

pp. 327–340

Language

  • English

Print Length

14 pages

19. Coordinating the State’s Knowledge Project

Interview with Mahmoud Dawoud and Mahmoud Hussein

  • Linda Herrera (author)
Chapter of: Education 2.0: Chronicles of Technological and Cultural Change in Egypt(pp. 327–340)
The Egyptian Knowledge Bank was established in 2016 as the largest knowledge platform in Egypt. It contains portals for the general public, K-12 learners and teachers, and researchers. The government commissioned the private company LIMS to handle its coordination and technical support. Mahmoud Dawoud, Marketing and Training Director, and Mahmoud Hussein, the Managing Director, explain how the platform has evolved over the years. They detail their initiative to index all Arabic language journals including ones from al-Azhar university, and the subsequent increase in university rankings. The challenge of a knowledge project is that it requires constant updating of materials and regular outreach to the public so that more users, and by association the society, can reap its benefits.

Contributors

Linda Herrera

(author)
Professor in the Department of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership in the Global Studies in Education program at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Linda Herrera is Professor in the Department of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership in the Global Studies in Education program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She was director of the Education 2.0 Research and Documentation Project in Egypt and served as an international education advisor. A social anthropologist with expertise in the Middle East and North Africa, her research and teaching cover a range of areas including education and power, youth studies, citizenship education and critical democracy, technology and society, and international education development. Her books include, Educating Egypt: Civic Values and Ideological Struggles (American University in Cairo Press, 2022), Global Middle East: Into the Twenty-First Century (with A. Bayat, University of California Press, 2021), Revolution in the Age of Social Media (Verso, 2014), Wired Citizenship: Youth Learning and Activism in the Middle East (Routledge, 2014), Being Young and Muslim: New Cultural Politics in the Global South and North (with A. Bayat, Oxford University Press, 2010), and Cultures of Arab Schooling: Critical Ethnographies from Egypt (with C. A. Torres, State University of New York Press, 2006).