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Explore my CV and read about my research here.

Hello,

I am an Assistant Professor in Sociology at the University of Toronto.

My research explores the transnational politics, meaning, and memory of violence and suffering in the Middle East and its diasporas.  I am especially interested in how claims of religious victimhood—often framed in terms of “persecution”—become powerful political idioms through which groups claim belonging and seek recognition. In addition, my collaborative projects explore knowledge production and collective memories of mass violence. I explore these interests qualitatively. My research has been published in the Sociology of Religion, Law & Society Review, the American Journal of Cultural Sociology, Memory Studies, and the Minnesota Journal of International Law.

My current book project, Persecution Politics: Copts and the Geopolitics of Religious Difference and Rights, grapples with the question of what happens when religion becomes the language through which suffering is made (in)visible—and weaponized—in global politics. Based on transnational ethnographic fieldwork between Egypt and the United States, I examine how narratives of Christian suffering are constructed, contested, and politicized by victim groups and transnational advocacy networks against the backdrop of the global war on terror. I am also co-editing a volume with Mina Ibrahim called, Coptic Ways of Knowing: Archives, Fieldwork, and New Directions in Coptic Studies, on knowledge production and methodological reflexivity in Coptic Studies.

I am committed to bridging the gap between academia, advocacy, and policy. I have delivered a statement at the 2025 UN Forum on Minority Issues and consulted for the UN Special Rapporteur on Counterterrorism and Human Rights and Minority Rights Group International. I currently sit on the Board of Advisors for the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy in Washington, DC and Redword for Human Rights and Freedom of Expression in Toronto. You can also find my public scholarship here.

I have a PhD and 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, lived in the United States, and currently reside in Toronto, Canada.