DISCOVER Morocco: Enchanting Medinas and Ancient Capitals

Alia Kate has lived and worked in half a dozen countries throughout the world, cultivating a career that revolves around social innovation, community development, and experiential education. She is the owner of Kantara, a fair-trade design business that specializes in Moroccan rugs. Through Kantara, Alia works directly with weaving cooperatives in Morocco and is committed to fostering economic development of the women artisans through ethical business practices.  

After two decades of living, working, and traveling in Morocco, Alia has a nuanced understanding of the nation’s history, politics, economy, and customs. Through her in-depth knowledge of the country and its cultural landscape, as well as her language skills (she speaks French, Spanish, English, Arabic, and the Amazigh dialect Tachelhit), she imparts unique insights and a personal perspective with guests.  

Alia joined Smithsonian Journeys in 2019 after a decade of leading educational tours for teens and college students. She holds an executive MBA and is a graduate of Oberlin College, where she studied international relations with a focus on the Middle East and North Africa. 

Iman is a landscape archaeologist, field researcher, and cultural surveyor with more than 15 years of experience in North Africa, the broader Mediterranean, and Southeast Asia. In her earlier career she focused on settlement archaeology and religious landscapes, working on projects in Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia. As her research led her to investigate the movement of ideology and material culture across vast distances, she turned her focus to the prehistoric Sahara in Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria, studying rock inscriptions and landscape configuration.

More recently, her archaeological work has incorporated coastal landscapes including the Canary and Madeira islands, where she has explored connections to the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa that date back 10,000 years.

Now based at the University of California, Los Angeles, Iman continues to follow her passion for the spectacular landscapes of the prehistoric world, working at sites ranging from the early neolithic to contemporary periods. Her research has been shared widely in international conferences. Iman takes great pleasure in demystifying archaeology, sharing her unique insights from the field, and shedding light on connections between cultures of the deep past.

Dr. Mouna Mana is a social sciences survey specialist at the University of Michigan where she advances survey projects that involve linguistic complexity. She has extensive experience with and passion for language education, the intersections of languages and cultures, and hybrid language practices. She is particularly fascinated by the linguistic richness and complexity of North African societies that fluidly blend Amazigh, Arabic, French, Spanish, and other languages. Mouna is a published poet who travels frequently to Morocco. She has lectured widely on the contemporary lived cultures of North Africa, including cuisines, arts, fashion, healing traditions, music, and architecture. Mouna approaches language as a lens and a reflection of social realities and evolving narratives, inviting others to contemplate the symbolism behind languages they encounter in public art, religious architecture, artifacts, marketplaces, historic sites, dress, and song. 

Dr. Veronica Menaldi is a globetrotting Latina-American born of Argentine immigrants with a passion for bringing the past to life. She is a polyglot award-winning scholar and educator with a PhD from the University of Minnesota, where she also earned funding from the Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowship and the Critical Language Scholarship program in Morocco, among others. Veronica is the vice president of the Societas Magica and the author of Love Magic and Control in Premodern Iberian Literature, in addition to numerous academic and public humanities articles. Her research focuses on socioreligious cultural contact originating from the Iberian Peninsula, examining cultural exchanges over the centuries through the lens of food and magic—from talismans to tarot. Among other places, she has done research in/on Spain, Portugal, Morocco, France, Italy, and many countries in Latin America. As such, she has taught courses and given lectures on the rich histories, literatures, and cultures across the Mediterranean and the Atlantic to high schoolers, university students, scholars, and the general public.

Dr. Jennifer Miyuki Babcock earned her Ph.D. in art history and archaeology at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. A specialist in ancient Egyptian and Nubian cultures, she has held curatorial and research roles at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the MFA Boston, and the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World and has participated in excavations in Egypt. She teaches a broad range of art history and visual arts administration courses at universities throughout New York City, including Pratt Institute, the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), and New York University. At FIT, she has developed and led study abroad programs in North Africa, including Morocco and Egypt.

Jennifer is interested in how artistic skill was valued in ancient Egyptian material and visual culture and how it may have dictated the organization of artistic labor within royal workshops. Additionally, she is interested in the relationship between wild and domestic animals and the ancient people living along the Nile Valley, and how their interactions may be reflected in visual and material culture. Jennifer explores these research topics in numerous publications, including her book, Ancient Egyptian Animal Fables.

Madeline Díaz is a Paris-based artist, educator, and art historian who designs and leads cultural programs for major museums and institutions in the United States and Europe. She has collaborated with leading organizations including The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Cloisters, The Frick Collection, and the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, and currently serves as a consulting educator for the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Latino.

Madeline has traveled extensively throughout Europe, Latin America, and Morocco, and frequently lectures on art, history, and cultural exchange. Her work reflects a particular interest in Mediterranean cultures and the transatlantic artistic and historical connections between Iberia and the Americas.

Having lived in France for more than 14 years, Madeline works across France, Spain, and the United States, developing engaging programs that connect audiences and travelers with the art, history, and cultural life of Europe. In Paris, she has created educational initiatives for institutions such as the Grand Palais and the Maison Européenne de la Photographie and has collaborated with renowned venues including the Jeu de Paume, the Centre Pompidou, and the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris. She also teaches museum education at the University of Versailles. She holds degrees from Brown University and Columbia University and speaks Spanish, French, and Italian fluently, with intermediate Portuguese.