Rawan Alfuraih

DPhil Student

Keble College

Rawan Alfuraih is an anthropologist, folklorist, and oral historian. Her DPhil research explores how the environmental change of early twentieth-century Saudi Arabian urbanisation reshaped bodylore—the deep connection between daily bodily movement, folkloric performances, and the environment’s cosmological significance. Focusing on Najd, the central region, she traces shifts in bodylore amidst the ecological transformation of migration from Najdi mud villages to Riyadh.

Her approach draws on archival sources, local cosmologies in folkloric texts, and oral history rooted in the embodied memories of elder Najdi participants. As a Najdi ethnographer, Rawan positions her doctoral ethnography as an extension of local ways of knowing within the long-standing oral traditions of storytelling about transformation and migration, presenting it under the title The Late Epic of Najd.

This story of migration builds on her previous research into daily life before urbanisation and the mutual relationship between folklore with the Najdi environment and mud village architecture. These elements continuously shaped and were shaped by daily bodily movement, social interactions, geographic kinship between neighbours, and gatherings for embodied performances, including sibaheen folktales, suwalif storytelling, poetry recitation, and women’s dance. Based on six years of fieldwork (2018–2023), this expanded research will be published as an Arabic book.

Her doctoral research is supported by the Estella Canziani Postgraduate Bursary from the Folklore Society.

Rawan’s DPhil fieldwork expands on an independent archival oral history project she began in 2018. With a background in information systems, she designs an archiving methodology that integrates archival processes into every stage of her research lifecycle, ensuring future reproducibility in alignment with open science while situating ethical conduct within local customs in Saudi Arabia.

Before fully transitioning to academia, she worked as a transformation consultant as well as a journalist, producing documentary films, podcasts, and articles about the Arab world. Beyond her research interests, Rawan is an aunt to two children and passionate about Arabic and English children’s literature and early exposure to storytelling.

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

Previous research

  • The Space of Tales: Ecologies of Bodily Movement in the Performance of Najdi Sibaheen Folktales in Saudi Arabia – Master’s dissertation, University of Aberdeen, 2023
  • The Dance of Pride: Kinship Embodiment in Arabian Women’s Dancing – paper, University of Aberdeen, 2023
  • Bodies, Walls and Power: Tracking Shifts in Power on Ushaiger Women Through the Spatial Dimension – Master’s dissertation, SOAS University of London, 2022
  • Ushaigeri Women’s Dancing on Fridays – paper, SOAS University of London, 2022

Publications

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
Supervisors