Research Interests: Displacement & Migration, Carceral Geographies, Border Studies, Refugee Solidarities, Palestinian Shattat & Sumud, Critical Legal Studies, Visual & Digital Ethnographies, Memory & Belonging, Political Economies of Migration, Decolonial & Anti-Genocide Studies
About:
I am a PhD candidate in Anthropology at UC Berkeley. My research interrogates the political economies of displacement and their afterlives, tracing how migration regimes, detention infrastructures, and legal frameworks shape the conditions of (im)mobility.
My academic focus emerged from my two MA theses in both migration and gender studies, which traced the diasporic lives of Syrian migrants and unpacked the bureaucratic, social, and legal negotiations Syrians undergo in Cairo’s urban landscape. I am currently exploring the ways in which solidarities amongst various Arabic-speaking migrant communities emerge in exile, the memory work of displacement, and the ever-shifting architectures of belonging, rebuilding, resisting, and surviving. My approach includes ethnographic and visual storytelling methods.
I am committed to scholarship that challenges dehumanization and genocidal war both in Palestine and globally and the silences that sustain them at UC Berkeley and beyond.
I earned my two Master’s degrees at the American University in Cairo, specializing in Migration and Refugee Studies, as well as in Gender and Women’s Studies with a focus on Gendered Political Economies. My MA theses received the January 25th Award for Scholarly Excellence. I received my BA in Political Science, History, and Middle Eastern Studies at Rutgers University.
Publications:
"Isthmus: Waseem's Journey." Third World Approaches to International Law Review, October 10, 2020.
"What One Can Do with Words." The Daily Californian, November 1, 2024.