Aymon Kreil is Associate Professor for the Anthropology of the Middle East at Ghent University. He worked before at the Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies at the University of Zurich. He has taught at the Universities of Cairo, Neuchatel, Fribourg, Zurich, and at the Geneva School of Art and Design. He has conducted most of his research in Egypt. He graduated (2012) in Anthropology jointly at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS, Paris) and at the University of Neuchâtel, in the framework of a Swiss-French academic partnership. His dissertation, titled Du rapport au dire: Sexe, amour et discours d’expertise au Caire analyses the ways love and sex are discussed in Cairo, questioning the “rhetoric of silence break” according to which desire is a taboo in the Middle East. He also obtained an MA in Social Sciences at the EHESS (2007), and a Licence in Anthropology, Arabic and History at the University of Geneva (2006).
Kreil’s recent publications include “Dire le harcèlement sexuel en Egypte: Aléas de traduction d’une catégorie juridique,” Critique internationale 70 (2016), “Territories of Desire: A Geography of Competing Intimacies in Cairo,” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 12, no. 1 (2016), “The Price of Love: Valentine’s Day and its Enemies in Egypt,” Arab Studies Journal 24(2) (2016), “Science de la psychè et connaissance de Dieu au Caire: La définition des domaines d’expertise à l’exemple d’une association de conseil,” Archives de Sciences sociales des religions 170 (2015): 269-284. He also coedited in 2016 a special section for the Arab Studies Journal entitled “The Trouble of Love in the Arab World: Romance, Marriage and the Shaping of Intimate Lives.”
