Nehal Elmeligy, born and raised in Cairo, is a Sociology Ph.D. candidate. She forecasts graduating in May 2025; the tentative title of her dissertation is Emergent Publics in the Time of Unpredictable Crackdowns: The Impact of Online/Offline Feminist Counterpublics in Contemporary Egypt. Briefly, this is a qualitative study of nine Egyptian feminist initiatives founded between 2015 and 2020 that create counterpublics by producing feminist knowledge, most importantly about violence against women. It studies the initiatives’ relationship with the state, each other and society. Nehal's 2021 publication " Airing Egypt's Dirty Laundry: BuSSy's Storytelling as Feminist Social Change" in Gender and Society has won two awards at the American Sociological Association in 2022 and 2023.