Msh Zanbik: shortlisted for the Times Higher Education MENA Region's Research Project of the Year: Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

Msh Zanbik, (It’s Not Your Fault) is a collaborative research project which resulted in the creation of a series of original plays about sexual harassment and assault in Egypt in order to 1) understand the issue of sexual harassment from the perspective of Egyptian university students and 2) to provide education on the issue. The ultimate goal is to change behavior, curb incidents of harassment and encourage reporting. The principal investigators of the project worked with over 60 AUC students and alumni to create, perform and publish the plays, which along with research commentary and resources, were published by AUC Press, marking the first published plays in Egypt that deal directly with sexual harassment. Their ethnographic Participatory Action Research model, relied on playwriting as the means of collecting data, analyzing data and sharing the results of the study.