My academic journey has carried me far. I began in marine engineering, transitioned through gender studies, and eventually arrived in anthropology. The path between these fields was driven by a deep interest in how people navigate displacement, borders, wars, conflicts, and everyday forms of care under conditions of uncertainty. Across disciplines and geographies, my eyes have always been on the Middle East.
I completed my PhD in Cultural Anthropology at Northwestern University, where I also earned a graduate certificate in Middle East and North African Studies. Before that, I received an MA in Gender Studies from Central European University. Since 2013, I have designed and led ethnographic research in Lebanon and various parts of Iran, including Eastern Kurdistan, focusing on the politics of migration, humanitarianism, and life at the margins of state care. I use a multi-method approach that includes long-term fieldwork, interviews, media and document analysis, and archival research.
My current book project draws on 18 months of fieldwork with Syrians, Lebanese, and Palestinians in Lebanon’s border regions. It follows displaced Syrians’ efforts to secure proper burial in exile and explores how these practices generate new forms of community and care outside the formal frameworks of the refugee regime.
Before joining the International Studies Program at Soka, I taught courses in international studies and anthropology at the University of Vermont, Brown University, and Northwestern. I’m excited to be part of the community and to share ideas, interests, experiences, and my passion for Middle East and North African Studies.
Migration and displacement, mobility and borderlands, resistance and armed struggle, human rights and humanitarianism, structural inequality, political economy, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, the Middle East
