Amira El Ahl was born in 1976 in Kassel, Germany. She studied Arabic at the American University in Cairo and majored in Arabic and History at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.

She started her career working for GEO-Magazine in Hamburg, Germany before moving on to become the Middle East correspondent for Der Spiegel Magazine in Cairo, Egypt between 2006-2008. As the first woman to work in Der Spiegel‘s Cairo office, she was able to bring her multicultural and multilingual background to bear on a wide range of issues including human rights, woman empowerment and socio-economic and political developments. Since November 2008, she is working as an independent journalist covering stories in the context of Middle Eastern art, culture and society. She has worked for Die Welt, GEO Magazine, Deutsche Welle, Goethe Institut Cairo, DAAD Cairo, GIZ Cairo, NKA Journal of Contemporary African Art, amongst others.

Amira El Ahl is moderating cultural, political and environmental events and dialogues in both German and English, amongst them the Cairo Climate Talks and panel discussions at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin and at the Frankfurt Bookfair. She has held numerous lectures on the role of women in the upheavals in the Arab world since 2011.

Amira El Ahl has worked as a video-journalist for DW-TV, filming and editing her own reports and given workshops on journalism, photography and participated in intercultural-trainings for professionals. She has published work in several catalogues including the art exhibition “The Changing Room – Reflections on Praxis and Times” (Spazio Qubi, Turin) and the photo-exhibition “Cairo. Open City. New Testimonies of an Ongoing Revolution” (Museum für Photografie Braunschweig).