Dr Omniya Abdel Barr is an architect with a multidisciplinary experience in urban conservation, monument restoration and cultural heritage documentation and digitisation. She holds a PhD in history from Aix-Marseille University (2015), an MSc in Conservation from Raymond Lemaire Center in KUL (2004) and a BSc in Architecture from the Fine Arts of Helwan University (2000).
Her work is concentrated on Islamic art and architecture with a focus on the Mamluk period (1250-1517) in Egypt and Syria. Since 2012, she has been documenting the looting and destruction in Egypt and has actively campaigned to save Historic Cairo’s architectural and cultural heritage. Omniya has initiated partnerships with respectable international institutions and has set up the structure and funding of her projects. Currently, she is the Barakat Trust Fellow at the Victoria and Albert Museum, leading the digitisation project on K.A.C. Creswell’s photographic collections, in partnership with the American University in Cairo, the Ashmolean Museum and Harvard University. She is also directing projects to rescue Mamluk heritage with the Egyptian Heritage Rescue Foundation, in which she is trying to set up a structure to preserve the know-how in traditional craftsmanship and create a specialised center in design to promote Historic Cairo’s arts and crafts.