Alia Mossallam is a cultural historian and writer, interested in songs that tell stories, and stories that tell of popular struggles behind the better known events that shaped world history. At the moment she is an Associate Researcher at the “Towards Sonic Resocialization” project at the Helmholtz Zentrum für Kulturtechnik of Humbdolt University. Responsible for the return of sound archives made with North African prisoners of war in Germany, to the soldiers’ communities, she has been implementing this as a collaborative process with historians and cultural activists in the region, as well as engaging with questions relating to accessibility and ethics of return and the building of new archives. This work is part of Mossallam’s larger ongoing project exploring moments of solidarity amongst North African workers and soldiers on the fronts of world war I, and the anti-colonial sentiments and actions that developed on the front and culminated in movements upon their return.

An experimentative pedagogue, Mossallam employs a history workshop pedagogy in all her  classes in university and beyond, engaging students with primary materials and encouraging  original research at all academic levels and archival productions based on them. Mossallam has taught in various universities in Cairo and Berlin, and was the first Distinguished Visiting Professor in Middle East History at the Barenboim Said Akademie in 2025. Some of her research 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.