Nagwa Abdelzaher Mohamed Bakr

Biography

Nagwa has two master’s degrees in Anthropology and Museum Studies, and PhD which focused on the representation of women’s heritage in museums.

Nagwa is currently the Director of the Training Department at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation (NMEC). In her role, she focuses on two main areas: developing the skills and capacities of museum staff, and creating engaging cultural learning experiences for the wider public.

Within the museum, she designs and delivers training programmes that support professional growth and team development. These include specialised training in heritage and museum management, as well as soft skills and wellbeing workshops on topics such as workplace etiquette, visitor experience, governance and psychological wellbeing.

Drawing on her own experience of receiving numerous international grants, training opportunities, and conference fellowships – Nagwa is also keen to share this knowledge with her colleagues. She regularly runs sessions introducing staff to funding organisations and teaches them how to write strong applications for international training and conference opportunities. She is particularly passionate about women’s empowerment and ensuring that training initiatives create inclusive and supportive spaces for all participants.

Beyond internal capacity building, Nagwa also leads public cultural events and interactive talks that link heritage to local and global themes, raising awareness and encouraging dialogue among diverse audiences.

For more than a year, Nagwa has been working on her project to document the culinary heritage of Upper Egypt, linking it to sustainability and identity, and providing many educational workshops on the art of cooking in a number of historical places.

Nagwa took part in The Museums Lab 2023 and as well as spending time in Europe (Berlin / Sweden Gothenburg at the Museum of World Culture), then the last phase travelled to Kenya and was able to connect with ITP fellows from across the country.

Most recently, with The Museums Lab, Nagwa is working on a project called El- Mastaba (a traditional construction in Egyptian villages).  The aim of the project is document the buildings as a living heritage place threatened by disappearance; and then turn the idea into a space inside museums to welcome communities as a safe area to discuss, argue, and feel connected to each other.

Recently, Nagwa travelled with the exhibition “Ramses and the Gold of the Pharaohs” to Sydney, Australia which opened last November 2023.

In 2024, Nagwa also participated in a research joint paper at a conference at the University of Lisbon on a recently initiated project “The Seventh Art, and the Civilization of the Seven Thousand Years: Reframing Popular Culture and History.” Additionally, she presented a research paper in Egypt at the Italian Institute in Cairo on “Women and the Heritage Interpretation: a case study of women from the Dakhla Oasis in Egypt.”

Also, Nagwa participated in the Current Research in Egyptology Conference (CRE) held in Liverpool, where she received an International Training Grant and presented a poster highlighting various NMEC programmes that focus on the heritage and contributions of Egyptian women in archaeology and heritage.

It was also her pleasure to have been invited to participate in the “Memory is the Future” conference at the Egyptian Museum in Turin, celebrating the 200th anniversary of the museum’s establishment. Her panel discussion, held with colleagues from museums in Berlin and Italy, revolved around the theme “New Audiences, New Language” and addressed several topics including community engagement in Egypt and how museums can strengthen their relationships with society.

In November 2025, Nagwa is preparing to participate in the ICOM General Conference in Dubai. She has once again been awarded an International Training ITP Grant to attend the conference and will present a research paper with the CAMOC Committee titled “Where the City Speaks: People, Memory and the Intangible Heritage of Al-Muizz Street, Cairo”.

Previously, Nagwa worked as a Community Engagement Officer at the Ministry of Antiquities, where she oversaw the setting up of community programmes with the aim to engage local communities to benefit from the public knowledge available in museums and sites. Her projects especially targeted women and their engagement with local heritage and traditional crafts workshops.

At the British Museum

During her time on the International Training Programme in 2019, Nagwa was based in the Department of Egypt and Sudan, and her partner placement was spent at Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester Museum and Whitworth Art Gallery.

In 2019 participants were asked to plan and propose a temporary exhibition around an object from the Museum’s collection working within the theme of journeys. Nagwa worked with Sanjeewani Upaka Widyarathne (Sri Lanka) on her Object in focus project. Their exhibition proposal was titled Spiritual Journey.

Legacy projects

In November 2022 Nagwa participated in an ITP legacy project based on the Museums Association Conference held in Edinburgh. As part of this week, with fellows from Armenia, Guatemala, India, Philippines, Romania, Rwanda and Uzbekistan.  Nagwa attended a programme structured around the 3-day MA Conference exploring how museums can create better places to live and work.