In Profile: Professor Intisar Elzein, Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research

Professor Intisar Soghayroun Elzein became Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research in September 2019, one of only four women to be promoted to ministerial positions in Sudan’s transitional government led by Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok. Prof Intisar leads the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research during a pivotal moment in Sudan’s transition to democracy.

I first heard of Prof Intisar when I was a newly graduated master’s student beginning my fieldwork in Sudan in early 2011. She was not only the Dean of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Khartoum, board member of the National Corporation of Antiquities and Museums (NCAM), and a senior member of the University of Khartoum’s Faculty of Archaeology but also director of the university’s archaeological mission at El Khandaq, an extremely impressive Islamic period trading town on the Nile in Northern State. Her choice to work at an Islamic site was surprising to me because many archaeological missions concentrated on the more ‘glamourous’ monumental pre-Islamic sites of the ancient Egyptian, Kushite or Christian periods. It was refreshing then, as it still is now, that an archaeologist has focused so keenly on the Islamic period—especially as it is arguably the period with most relevance for modern Sudan. 

I read more about Prof Intisar’s work and found that alongside extensive scientific investigations at El Khandaq, she was also spending time with and interviewing members of the local community, some of whose families had been involved in the town’s trade and had memories connected to the living configuration of the old town. In some ways, her integrated methodology was even more impressive than her subject, as community-centred and participatory approaches to archaeology were not as common as they are now. Collaborative archaeology and anthropology are two one of my main research areas, so I am very much following in her wake. Prof Intisar has persisted with these endeavours since she became the first to hold theUNESCO Chair of Archaeology at the University of Khartoum in 2018, through which she works to develop the relationship between archaeology and modern Sudanese communities using tangible and intangible heritage such as music, poetry and art.

Archaeology is a tough industry for those who choose it. When I interviewed Prof Intisar for my PhD research in 2013, we discussed pervasive global industry norms such as low pay, funding restrictions and few jobs. However, in the years since I have also observed the serious issues faced by female Sudanese archaeologists, the cultural norms which challenge women working outside with other men in labour-intensive jobs, often far away from home for months at a time. The academic world is fraught, too, with power imbalances and glass ceilings that obstruct women’s rise to positions of power and influence. In this context, and considering the many other problems facing Sudan’s neglected and under-funded heritage and antiquities sector, I find Prof Intisar’s work sincerely admirable.

Prof Intisar is a woman working in one of the most demanding areas of STEM, who has helped pioneer Islamic archaeology as well as ground-breaking ethnographic and community archaeology projects some years before her peers. 

For those who would like to know more about Prof Intisar’s work I suggest they use her Academia page where some of her articles are listed or go to her newly verified Twitter account: @ProfIntisar. If anyone is interested to know more about archaeology in Sudan, do get in contact on Academia, Twitter, Instagram or via my website (rebradshaw.com) and I can guide you to adult- and child-friendly resources in Arabic and English.

Rebecca Bradshaw is an anthropologist specialising in the conflicts and cultures in the Middle East and Africa. She initially trained as an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge and went on to spend almost ten years living and working as a consultant throughout the region, including in Iraq and Qatar. She completed her award-winning PhD in the social, political and economic impacts of heritage at the same time. Since 2018 Rebecca has also worked in conflict research, most recently as Series Editor for Small Arms Survey’s Human Security Baseline Assessment (HSBA) project for Sudan and South Sudan.