I am a sociologist of religion, culture, politics and violence, with a transnational focus on the United States and the Middle East. I am currently a PhD Candidate in Sociology at the University of Minnesota. Formerly, I was a Visiting Scholar at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs and a Visiting Scholar at Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies.

My research explores the transnational politics, meaning, and memory of violence and suffering. I am especially interested in how religion and rights shape interpretations of violence and chart trajectories for mobilization. My dissertation, The Transnational Politics of Christian Persecution, explores the impact of geopolitics on meaning-making struggles about the plight of Christians in the Middle East. My collaborative projects examine knowledge production and memory after mass atrocities. This research has been published in the American Journal of Cultural Sociology, Minnesota Journal of International Law, and Memory Studies.

My research has been generously supported by the Social Science Research Council; the Louisville Institute; the Global Religion Research Initiative at the University of Notre Dame; the Center for Arab American Philanthropy; the UMN Human Rights Program; the UMN Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies; the UMN Graduate School; and the UMN Sociology Department.

I have an MA in Sociology from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and a BS in both Psychology and Sociology from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. I was born in Egypt, raised in Kuwait, and currently live in the United States.