Heba Khalil will be presenting the results of a 3-year ethnography in the Egyptian Delta village of Tahseen, where, in 2012, the population of 3000 declared their administrative secession from the governorate. None of its residents had joined the Arab Uprisings in 2011, and none of the study's respondents from the village considered their act of secession to be political. Khalil's study seeks to understand the reasons behind this daring act and explain the relationship of the rural to the Egyptian Revolution. It examines how the mobilisation in the village relates to that in the urban squares, and to the narrative of the revolution, including through the media, legislatures and the political elites.

Heba Khalil is a PhD student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She holds an LLM in Public International Law from the University of York and a BA in Political Science and History from the American University in Cairo. She has served as a senior Researcher and then as a Deputy Director of the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights (ECESR) between 2011–15. 

John Chalcraft is Professor of Middle East History and Politics in the Department of Government at the LSE.

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