Mariem Danial

Biography

Mariem has worked as a curator at the Coptic Museum since 2013. She is a member of the education team at the museum, in charge of creating activities for children, in particular school students. She creates and develops educational resources for visitors and designs learning strategies to engage the public in line with the ethos of the museum. Her research interest is Arabic Christian Heritage – history, culture and products through Arabic and Coptic manuscripts.

Mariem also works as an assistant in the Manuscript Department, creating new records on the Coptic Manuscript database. She has assisted in the preparation of temporary exhibitions at the Coptic Museum over the last four years; responsibilities have included collecting historical data for exhibition text and label, brochures and design banners. She participates in the committee for renewing the museum labels, documentation system and database.

In 2016 she participated in the JICA Knowledge Co-Creation Program Museums and Community Development in the National Museum of Ethnology, Japan.

Mariem is now working to create permanent education programmes in the Coptic Museum, to engage the Egyptian community and families in the work of the Coptic Museum as an Egyptian Museum rather than solely a Christian museum. In summer 2018 she and two other curators planned and coordinated a training programme for Coptic Museum volunteers.

Mariem is studying for a Masters degree in Museum Studies.

At the British Museum

During her time on the International Training Programme 2017, Mariem was based in the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan and spent her partner placement with Norfolk Museums Service.

In 2017 participants were asked to develop a proposal for an Asahi Shimbun Display – a temporary exhibition in Room 3 at the British Museum – based around a ‘spotlight’ object.  Mariem worked with fellow Astghik Marabyan (Director of Education, Cafesjian Centre for the Arts, Armenia) on her exhibition proposal project, entitled Bridging Voices: Dia Al-Azzaw.

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