Hadeer Belal

Biography

Hadeer Belal is Registrar at the Egyptian Museum Cairo (EMC), working in the Registration, Collection, Management and Documentation Department (RCMDD). Her responsibilities include registering and documenting artefacts in the museum’s permanent collection – many of which have been repatriated, excavated, confiscated or donated. Since joining the department in 2022, she and the registration team have registered more than 1,430 repatriated objects.

Hadeer is also part of the registration team responsible for the preparation and management of the Egyptian Museum’s international loan exhibitions. Her duties include registering and documenting the selected collections, preparing and verifying condition reports, assisting in packing and unpacking procedures, and tracking the objects throughout their movement and safe return to the museum’s galleries. She has contributed to major travelling exhibitions at the Shanghai Museum, China (2024-2025), and the upcoming exhibition in Rome, Italy (2025-2026), both of which highlight treasures from the Egyptian Museum Cairo.

In addition to her collections management work, Hadeer contributes to the organisation and interpretation of the museum’s temporary exhibitions, supports visiting scholars in locating and researching objects, and participates in inventorying the museum’s permanent galleries. Her growing interest in exhibition design and communication led her to attend the online workshop Organising Temporary Exhibitions from your Collections and Tourism Strategies (Heritage Management Organisation, 2022), and to deliver a public lecture at the Egyptian Museum Cairo titled ‘I Received and My Heart is Satisfied’ – A New Museological Vision to Display the Coptic Receipts (2022).

Throughout 2024 and 2025, Hadeer continued to expand her professional and academic profile through international collaborations and training programmes. In 2025, she participated in the Seminar on Chinese Language for Government Officials from English-speaking African Countries (Ministry of Commerce, People’s Republic of China; October 11–31, 2025), where she also delivered a lecture entitled “Egyptian Museums: Past Achievements, Present Highlights, Future Prospects.” Earlier that year, she joined the Archaeology Summer School organised by the Yunus Emre Institute in Türkiye (Çanakkale, İzmir, Gaziantep, Şanlıurfa, Ankara, Istanbul; July–August 2025), presented a scientific poster at GARDEN X: Graduate Annual Research Discussion on Egypt and Nubia (German Archaeological Institute, Cairo; February 2025), and attended the Working with Coptic: Structure in Language, Texts and Text Editions seminar at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (January 2025).

She also completed the PERET Seminar (French Institute of Archaeology in Cairo & Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities; October 2024–June 2025), following her earlier participation in the AKHET Seminar (October 2023–May 2024). In 2024, she also took part in the Grassroots Cultural Preservation in a Changing World: Digitization and Metadata workshop (American Research Center in Egypt, Cairo) and the DAAD-funded COSIMENA Workshop: Between Status and Statues – Women in Critical Times in Ancient Egypt and Beyond (December 2024).

In 2023, she was awarded a Fellowship Grant by the American Alliance of Museums and attended its 117th Annual Meeting in Denver, USA. She also presented her research at both the XIIIth International Congress of Egyptologists (Leiden University) with the lecture “Coptic Influence on Egyptian Heritage: Al-Manqabadi,” and Current Research in Egyptology (Basel University) with “Repatriated Treasures: The Collection of the Egyptian Museum Cairo.”

Before her current role, Hadeer served for a decade as Curator at the Coptic Museum in Cairo, specialising in Coptic ostraca. Her work focused on creating a comprehensive database of the museum’s holdings and curating exhibitions such as Sweetness in the Past and Tones of Civilisation. She has delivered numerous public lectures, including Motherhood in Ancient Egypt between Art and Literature and Coptic Museum and Exhibitions and Display.

Hadeer holds a Master’s degree in Archaeology and Egyptology from Cairo University (2019), where her thesis offered a comparative linguistic study of Coptic legal documents. She is currently pursuing her PhD at the same institution.

Publications

• “Loan agreement,” Journal of Coptic Studies, Vol. 19, 2017, pp. 50–52.
• “Homologia relating to a loan, P.Heid. Inv. Kopt. 58,” Coptica Palatina: Koptische Texte aus der Heidelberger Papyrussammlung, 2019, pp. 102–104.
• “Agreement,” in Ten Coptic Ostraca at the IFAO, edited by Anne Boud’hors & Esther Garel, BIFAO 119, 2019, pp. 28–31.

At the British Museum

During her time on the International Training Programme in 2013, Hadeer was based in the Department of Egypt and Sudan and her partner placement was spent at Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, Oxford.

In 2013 participants are asked to prepare a project outlining an exhibition proposal based on the space and programme for the British Museum’s Asahi Shimbun Displays in Room 3.  Hadeer’s exhibition project proposal was entitled Egyptian water jars: Quenching the thirst across eras.

Her place on the programme was generously supported by the John S. Cohen Foundation.

Legacy Projects

In November 2015 Hadeer attended the ITP Mumbai Workshop Creating Museums of World Stories. The workshop was held at CSMVS and was attended by many ITP fellows from different years and countries, UK partners and British Museum Colleagues.

In 2016 Hadeer attended the Leicester University Museum Studies Conference with the ITP team and fellows from China, Turkey and Uganda. The group gave a workshop at the conference on Shared Histories and Global Voices.

In 2017 Nelson Abiti (Uganda, ITP 2013) successfully applied for an ITP collaborative award entitled The Road to Reconciliation. As a project partner Hadeer will contribute to the final products of educational resources, a touring exhibition and an updated permanent display.

In October 2018 Hadeer attended the ITP+ Course on Museum Interpretation in Aswan. Fellows and colleagues from Egypt, Sudan and around the world listened to interpretation case studies, participated in project work, sessions on label & panel writing and panel discussions on audience surveys and evaluations. The course was hosted by the Nubia Museum.

In May 2019 Hadeer visited Uganda as part of the ITP collaborative award project. She took part in a panel discussion on cultural heritage in Uganda.

In 2023 Hadeer was awarded two ITP Conference Grants (one carried over from 2022) to attend The XIIIth International Congress of Egyptologists at Leiden University in the Netherlands and the other to speak at the Current Research in Egyptology conference in Basel, Switzerland.
At ICE, Hadeers talk was entitled Coptic influence on Egyptian Heritage: Al- Manqab.
At the CRE, she talk was entitled Repatriated Treasures: The Collection of the Egyptian Museum Cairo.