Bryony Harris is a PhD Candidate at Utrecht University in the History of International Relations Department. Within the ERC COOPERATION project, her research focuses on the Sanitary Council in Egypt (1831-1938) for which she will write the first diplomatic, institutional history.

Her thesis will map the preconditions for international public health cooperation within Egypt, in order to explain how the Sanitary Council induced and sustained localised sanitary internationalism there for over a century. To achieve this, she will draw upon material from both Egyptian and European archives, adopting a bottom-up approach to foreground the local agency of Egyptians and to counter prevailing, western-centric narratives of historical health cooperation.

Bryony received her BA(Hons) in English Language and Literature from the University of Oxford and her first MA from Royal Holloway, University of London in Victorian Art, Literature and Culture. She obtained her second MA in International Relations in Historical Perspective from Utrecht University in 2022, submitting a thesis focused on the Irish Free State’s response to the Treaty of Lausanne.