The Women and Memory Forum (WMF) organized a workshop at the American University in Beirut (AUB) in collaboration with the Knowledge Workshop (KW) in Lebanon, the Asfari Institute for Civil Society and Citizenship, and the Women and Gender Studies (WGS) Initiative at the AUB. The workshop was held on the sidelines of the WMF’s exhibition Doing Well. Don’t Worry: Short Tales of Women’s Work and Mobility, which opened in Beirut in the period from 8 to 18 December 2017.

During the workshop, speakers from the American University in Cairo, the Women and Memory Forum in Egypt, as well as academic, archivists, curators, and artists from Lebanon discussed together oral history issues, and the various documentation tools and methodologies used to curate women’s stories and work in archives and history.

The workshop sessions are available online via the AUB’s YouTube channel.

Doing Well. Don’t Worry came as part of the WMF’s work towards establishing the first woman’s museum in Egypt and the Middle East. The exhibition is the result of the collaboration between the Women and Memory Forum (WMF), the Women’s Museum in Denmark, the Danish-Egyptian Dialogue Initiative (DEDI), the Anthropology Unit at the American University in Cairo (AUC), the Cynthia Nelson Institute for Gender and Women’s Studies (IGWS) at the AUC, Tiraz in Jordan, and the Knowledge Workshop in Lebanon. In addition, students and young professionals in the fields of social sciences, architecture, museums, and graphic design contributed to organizing the exhibition.

Doing Well. Don’t Worry displayed glimpses from the lives of the women who moved and worked as medical professionals, tour guides, domestic workers, teachers, students, accountants, filmmakers, actresses, artists, seamstresses, and needleworkers, as well as mothers, daughters, friends, mentors, and advisors for other women. These women live in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Denmark. Their lives invite us to travel across multiple spaces, peoples, and times, as they inspire us to rethink the familiar meanings and assumptions about women, mobility, and work.