Omnia Zaghlol Chehata Abdelgwad

Biography

As supervisor of the departments and administration at Akhenaten Museum, Omnia’s responsibilities range from organising departmental activities to the planning of programmes with local communities, spreading awareness of archaeology and developing school workshops.

Museum interests include education, accessibility and collections databases. A strong professional interest is community work and developing sustainable ways of working with the local society and is currently researching ‘The Role of the Museum in Achieving Community Communication with Marginalized Groups’, a subject she has written about in the Journal of Museums in the Middle East recently. Alongside this, she has worked on a summer course which aimed to create job opportunities in heritage for young people, developed a textile craft workshop about for women and organised a series of scientific research lectures for school girls.

Currently, the Museum is under construction and closed to the public and work is underway to keep the local community involved, focusing on the museum’s social and cultural role and integrating with society to prepare for the future.

At the British Museum

During Omnia’s time on the International Training Programme she spent time in whole group sessions for a detailed overview of all aspects of the Museum’s work, both front of house and behind the scenes. She also spent some time in the department of Egypt and Sudan. She spent her UK partner placement at Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester Museum and Whitworth Art Gallery.

Omnia’s place on the International Training Programme was generously supported by the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust.