Rawan Alfuraih

DPhil Student

Keble College

I am not pretending that this narrative fell from the sky, or that it has an unknown author like many genres throughout human history. It was composed by me, Rawan. Salam!

I am an anthropologist from central Arabia, specifically the plateau of Najd. My research, Epic of Najd, tells how elders remember the gradual mass migration from mud towns to Riyadh. The story is about Najd’s broader disruption of human mutuality with the environment during the early twentieth century. Here, I explore a tale of change, of urbanisation as an ecological rupture, and its influence on Najdi collective bodily memory.

The ethnography begins with the dry Najdi land, tracing kinship, ecological ethics, and cosmologies, especially through palms, wells, and waqf (Islamic charitable endowment). It then moves to moments of rupture involving different environmental elements. The final part explores the encounter with Riyadh as a new place, produced through the intimacies and solidarities of new arrivals within kinship and neighbourhood networks.

This research began as a side, independent project in 2018 and later became the focus of my life. Perhaps my fieldwork began even earlier, as I draw on memories of observations and encounters with oral and written genres from my teenage years. The materials that Najd imposed on me include oral history interviews with elders, archival collections, and different forms of text: poetry, folktales, waqf deeds concerning palms, and Arabian historiography in chronicles and oral narratives, especially those recounting environmental catastrophes that caused mass migrations, such as droughts, famines, and the destruction of water sources. These traditions are not only sources for analysis. I also learn from them in shaping my framework, writing methods, and archiving practices.

The Estella Canziani Postgraduate Bursary from the Folklore Society has generously supported this research.

Upcoming publications

A tale towards porous archiving: Methodological response to poles of archival hesitation and loss anxiety

This accepted paper for publication is an archiving methodology that integrates archival processes into research planning before fieldwork, throughout the research lifecycle, and beyond. Four years of fieldwork with multidisciplinary practitioners revealed a polarisation between ethics and sustainability. The framework thus aims to balance the two and is illustrated through graphs presenting 14 principles and 38 implementation steps. Rather than adopting ‘open science’, I propose Porous archiving through thoughtful openness and ongoing ethical thinking. This framework is only the beginning of a wider research agenda.

The space of tales: Remembering the performance of sibaheen in mud architecture

Based on eight years of fieldwork, this upcoming book covers the first season of this story: how women and children moved through the mud architecture of Najdi towns, socialised, and performed folktales in gatherings of neighbours and kin during the early twentieth century. I look at the design of storytelling places, such as rooftops and streets, alongside processes of remembering and bodily gestures during narration, which are also documented in transcriptions of women’s performances. Bringing these together, I explore how spatial imaginaries within folktales shaped movement through those same spaces in everyday life.

Key publications

·       Niqabi Women’s Exclusion from Saudi Arabia’s Job Market (Aswat podcast, Thmanyah, co-produced with Mazen Alotaibi,  2021)

·       Incomplete Wedding: The Impact of Women’s Vaginismus (Aswat podcast, Thmanyah, co-produced with Mazen Alotaibi, 2020)

·       Malcolm X: The Untold Story From an Arab Perspective (Documentary film, Thmanyah, 2020)

·       Underground Metal Bands Concerts in Saudi Arabia (Aswat podcast, Thmanyah, co-produced with Samar Sulaiman, 2020)

·       The White Room: Life Without Memory, Smell, or Colour (Aswat podcast, Thmanyah, co-produced with Samar Sulaiman, 2020)

·       Between Borders: Journeys of Displacement from Somalia to Syria (Aswat podcast, Thmanyah, co-produced with Alwaleed Alessaa, 2020)

·       Encounters in Eight Rides with a Ride-Hailing Service (Aswat podcast, Thmanyah, 2020)

·       Lebanon’s 2019 Revolution Through the History of Empty Buildings (Documentary film, Thmanyah, 2019)

·       What is life like after losing your memory? (Documentary film, Thmanyah, co-produced with Mazen Alotaibi, 2019)

·       The Teachers We Cannot Forget (Aswat podcast, Thmanyah, co-produced with Mazen Alotaibi,  2019)

·       Ghalia Allbuqamiyah: A Saudi Female Leader the Ottomans Thought Was a Sorceress (Article, Thmanyah, 2019)

·       What Does It Mean to Be Born and Live in the Desert? (Documentary film, Thmanyah, 2019)

Education

·       DPhil in Anthropology, University of Oxford, Oxford, in progress

·       Master of Research in Social Anthropology, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, 2023

·       Master of Arts in Social Anthropology, SOAS University of London, London, 2022

·       Master of Science in Information Systems, DePaul University, Chicago, 2017

·       Bachelor of Science in Information Systems, Prince Sultan University, Riyadh, 2014

Email address: rawan.alfuraih@anthro.ox.ac.uk