Alia Mossallam is a cultural historian, educator and writer interested in songs that tell stories and family histories that tell of popular struggles behind the better-known events that shape world history. She is currently working on historicizing the construction of the Aswan High Dam through songs and stories of the experiences of its builders and the Nubian communities displaced by it; through a manuscript and various visual and sonic installations. Some of her research-based articles, essays and short-stories can be found in The Journal of Water History, The History Workshop Journal, the LSE Middle East Paper Series, Ma’azif, Bidayat, Mada Masr, Jadaliyya and 60 Pages. An experimentative pedagogue, she founded the site-specific public history project “Ihky ya Tarikh”, exploring overlooked struggles in various regions in Egypt. At the moment she is teaching Middle East history through music at the Barenboim-Said Akademie in Berlin and tracing the trail of North African soldiers and workers across the fronts of World War I. She strives to reveal their solidarity movements on the warfronts in Europe and bring them , through history workshops, back home.