Olga Verlato, Ph.D.

• “Children in the Archive: Migration and School Life in Turn-of-the-Century Egypt.” In Children and Youth Migrants in Middle East and North African History (Special Issue). Mashriq & Mahjar:
  Journal of Middle East & North African Migration Studies 11.2 (2024): 93-117.
• “A Latin Alphabet for the Arabic Language: Romanizing Arabic in Late Nineteenth-Century Egypt and Beyond.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 55, no. 3 (2023): 444-460.
• “Printing Arabic Manuscripts in the Sixteenth Century.” In Manuscripts and Arabic-Script Writing in Africa, eds. Stewart, Charles and Ahmed Chaouki Binebine. The Islamic Manuscript
  Association, 2023: 175-197.
• Conversation Series "History Sounds." Borderlines, Community Site of Comparative Studies of
  South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (CSSAAME).
• “‘Their Parents Are All Sailors and Blue-Collar Workers:’ Elementary Education in the Suez Canal Region at the Turn of the Century.” In Italy and the Suez Canal, from the Mid-nineteenth Century to the Cold War: A Mediterranean History. ed. Barbara Curli. Palgrave MacMillan, 2022: 297-312.
• “Practicing Italian Education in the Egyptian 1890s: A Case Study.” In Italian Subalterns in Egypt
  Between Emigration and Colonialism (1861-1937), ed. Costantino Paonessa. UC Louvain Atelier
  d'Erasme, 2021: 79-94.
• “Even if the Sons of Rum Are not like Him: The Spatial and Temporal Journey of a Late
  Nineteenth-Century Egyptian Song.” Middle East - Topics & Arguments. 10 (2018): 95-107

• (2025) “Claiming Language: Student Demands and the Politics of Education in Colonial Egypt.”
  Beyond Nostalgia: History and Archives of Vernacular Cosmopolitanism in Colonial Egypt,
  University of Bologna (Italy).
• (2025) “The Multilingual Origins of the Arab Press.” The Multilingual Mediterranean,
  Mediterranean Workshop, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
• (2023) “Teachers on the Move: Urban Networks in Egypt and Beyond, 1870s-1910s.” Cities in
  Context Annual History Seminar, American University in Cairo (Egypt).
• (2022) “Making the Most of Multilingual Classrooms in History Teaching.” A Panel on Teaching
  Modern Egypt. Modern Egyptian Studies Forum, University of Pennsylvania (Remote).
• (2022) “Manuscript and Print Cultures around the Mediterranean: The Case of the Medici
  Oriental Press.” Facing New Technologies Research Group. Centre for the Study of Manuscript
  Cultures, University of Hamburg (Germany).
• (2021) “Printing Arabic Manuscripts in the Sixteenth Century: The Medici Oriental Press, from
  North Africa to Rome and Back.” Arabic-Script Manuscripts in Africa. Bibliotheca Alexandrina
  and The Islamic Manuscript Association (Egypt -Remote).
• (2019) “Long “Alternative Geographies of Mediterranean Printing: The Italian-Egyptian
  Connection.” Currents and Currency: Cultural Circulations in the Mediterranean and Beyond,
  Koç University (Türkiye)

Olga Verlato’s work centers on the history of modern Egypt and the Middle East, Mediterranean migration and language politics, and media and education. Her book project is tentatively titled "Polyglot Egypt: Language Politics and the Rise of the Modern Nation." It reframes Egypt's emergence as a formally monolingual state by the early twentieth century as the product of a longer history of multilingual competition and exchange amidst the state's reconfiguration as an increasingly autonomous Ottoman province, heightened Mediterranean migration and European inter-imperial competition, and emerging linguistic nationalism. Verlato was a Klarman Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University (2024-2025), and her dissertation received the Middle East Studies Association of North America’s 2024 Malcolm H. Kerr Award (Humanities).