About

Rebecca is an award-winning researcher and broadcaster focusing on the conflicts and cultures of the Middle East and Africa.

Her diverse work has appeared on the BBC The New York TimesAl Jazeera, PBS and Channel 5, among others.

 

Rebecca has spent the past ten years living and working throughout the Middle East and Africa region, basing herself variously in Cairo, Khartoum, Doha, and Erbil. During this time she has won a number of awards for her research, including a fully-funded AHRC doctoral grant and a Journalism Award from the Centre of Religious and Global Affairs.

Alongside extensive solo research she has worked as a consultant for institutions such as the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, the High Commission for Erbil Citadel Revitalization in Erbil, Iraq, and UCL Qatar at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Meroe in Sudan.

Rebecca has often lived ‘on the ground’ during times of conflict and upheaval, such as the revolution in Nepal in 2006; numerous protests in Khartoum, Sudan, since 2013; the Arab Spring era in Cairo, Egypt, in 2011-14; the revolution in Kiev, Ukraine, in 2014; and the Saudi-led blockade of Qatar in 2017-18.

She has also achieved a number of firsts:

In early 2012 Rebecca was one of three people to co-direct the first archaeological excavations at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Erbil Citadel in Iraqi Kurdistan, which seems to be the longest continuously inhabited site in the world at 6,000 years old.

In the same year she led the first tours around Iraqi Kurdistan for Steppes Travel, taking groups around the Zagros Mountains, from the Yezidi temples at Lalish to Saddam Hussein’s ruined palaces and former detention centres.

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Rebecca is currently Assistant Professor of Tourism and Cultural Heritage at the United Arab Emirates University.

From 2019-2020, Rebecca completed consultancies with Small Arms Survey and Chemonics International, where she helped produce research on weapons flows and armed conflict in the Middle East, Asia and Africa. 

In her spare time, Rebecca works as a contributor to the online Middle East news outlet, Al-Monitor, and as a TV broadcaster, most recently for PBS America, The Discovery Channel, and Channel 5.

She is also involved in a number of projects, such as an Iran project with the Royal Anthropological Institute, and also holds posts such as Committee Member of the Society for Study of the Sudans UK (SSSUK).


Top image: Rebecca was invited by the UK Department of Trade and Investment to present a talk on tourism in Iraqi Kurdistan. Photo credit: Sebastian Meyer


© 2006-21 Rebecca Bradshaw. All rights reserved, except where stated otherwise.

Articles

Edited papers

Jérôme Tubiana, Clotilde Warin, and Mahamat Saleh Mangare. Diaspora in Despair: Darfurian Mobility at a Time of International Disengagement. Small Arms Survey, Geneva. June 2020. [Co-edited with Matt Johnson]

Khalid Ammar Hassan. Spilling Over: Conflict Dynamics in and around Sudan’s Blue Nile State, 2015–19. Small Arms Survey, Geneva. March 2020.

Alan Boswell. Insecure Power and Violence: The Rise and Fall of Paul Malong and the Mathiang Anyoor. Small Arms Survey, Geneva. October 2019.

Joshua Craze. Displaced and Immiserated: The Shilluk of Upper Nile in South Sudan’s civil war, 2014-19. Small Arms Survey, Geneva. September 2019.

Flora McCrone. War Crimes and Punishment: The Terrain compound attack and military accountability in South Sudan, 2016-18. Small Arms Survey, Geneva. August 2019.

News

*NEW* When it comes to conserving heritage sites, the world is not enough in The National, 2 March 2022. [in English]

The dangers of ‘world heritage’ in The National, 5 November 2021. [in English]

Egyptology isn’t just about what we find, but who finds it – and why’ in The National, 17 February 2021. [in English]

‘Meet the agency that brought World Press Photo’s images to Iraq’ in Al-Monitor, 22 August 2019. [in English]

‘Saudi Arabia seeks to entice visitors with pre-Islamic sites’ in Al-Monitor, 20 February 2019. [in English]

‘How this royal portrait boosted Qatari national identity’ in Al-Monitor, 16 January 2019. [in English]

‘Sotheby’s auctions off ancient Egyptian artifacts’ in Al-Monitor, 7 December 2018. [in English]

‘Idlib museum throws open doors in defiance of threats’ in Al-Monitor, 31 August 2018. [in English]

‘British Museum hands over Girsu treasures to Iraq’ in Al-Monitor, 17 August 2018. [i English]

‘Despite IS threat, Iraqi Kurdistan tries to lure tourists’ in Al-Monitor, 12 January 2016. [in English, Arabic and Turkish]

‘Will Qatar’s Investment In Ancient Pyramids Bring Tourists To Sudan?’ in Al-Monitor, 7 December 2015. [in English and Arabic]

Academic

Bradshaw, R. (f/c, 2022) ‘The Impact of Conflict on Sudanese Architecture’. Encyclopaedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World. Bloomsbury.

Humphris, J, Bradshaw, R, and Emberling, G, (2021) Archaeological Practice in the Twenty-First Century: Reflecting on Archaeologist-Community Relationships in Sudan’s Nile Valley. In: G. Emberling and B. Williams (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bradshaw, R (2020) ‘Reflections on the Coronavirus Pandemic in Sudan, South Sudan and the UK: A conversation hosted by SSSUK’. Sudan Studies 62.

Abulgasim, T and Bradshaw R. (2020) The contemporary significance of archaeological sites in Sudan: A case study of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of El Kurru, Sudan. Sudan Studies 62.

Bradshaw R (2020) The Small Arms Survey’s Human Security and Baseline Assessment (HBSA) Project, 2016-19. Sudan Studies 61: 65-75. [Find the PDF here]

Bradshaw R (2019) UCL Qatar: Archaeology in Meroe. Sudan Studies: 76-9. [Find the PDF here]

Bradshaw, R. (2018) ‘Fāida shenū? (What is the benefit?): A Framework for Evaluating the Economic Impacts of Archaeology’, Sudan & Nubia 22: 188-197. [Find the PDF here]

Humphris J and Bradshaw R (2017) Understanding the ‘Community’ before ‘Community Archaeology’: A Case Study from Sudan. Journal of Community Archaeology and Heritage 4(3), 203-217. [Find the PDF here

The article above also appeared in Participatory Archaeology and Heritage Studies: Perspectives from Africa, a special book published by Taylor and Francis in 2018, which is available now on Amazon. [20% discount available – enter the code FLR40 at checkout.]

Spence K, Rose P, Bradshaw R et al. (2011) Sesebi 2011. Sudan & Nubia 15, 34-9. [Find the PDF here]

Magazine

2020. August. Professor Intisar Elzein, Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research. 500 Words Magazine. [Find the article here]

2020, May. 12 Must-Visit Attractions in Doha, Qatar. Culture Trip. [Find the article here]

2020, March. Top 10 Things To Do in Khartoum, Sudan. Culture Trip. [Find the article here]

2014. Kurdistan’s 21st Century ‘Gold Rush’. Popular Archaeology 16. [Find Rebecca’s profile here and the article here]

This article was also published in book and Kindle formats and described as “the finest issue of Popular Archaeology Magazine to date”. It can be found on Amazon.

2013. Off the Beaten Track in Iraqi Kurdistan. Current World Archaeology 61, 52-55. [Find the PDF here]

Blogs

Community engagement at Barkal, in the University of Michigan project website, March 2022. [in English]

Images

Rebecca has worked and travelled extensively across the globe. She has been from Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Morocco, Egypt, Iraq, and Qatar, to Sudan, South Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa. She has also spent long periods in north and south India, Nepal, south-east Asia, the US and Central America, Latin America, Europe, and the Caucuses.

Follow me on Instagram to see more!

© 2006-19 Rebecca Bradshaw. All rights reserved.

The view over Juba, South Sudan, April 2019
‘Glorious Tamim’: an image of the Qatari sheikh at the opening of the aponymous exhibition at the W Hotel in Doha at the beginning of the Saudi-led blockade, July 2017
Maidan – the main square in Kiev – at the beginning of the revolution, 21 February 2014.
Newroz in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Sulimaniya, March 2014
Lads play football as protests rage in Khartoum, Sudan, September 2013
Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt, a year after the Arab Spring, April 2012
Everest Base Camp during the Nepalese revolution, May 2006