Main Discipline(s):
Main Professional Societies:
Affiliation(s):
- Political Science
- International Studies Association
- American Political Science Association
- Associate Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Wayne State University
- Comparative Politics; Middle East Studies; Gender in International Relations
I knew that I wanted to work on Middle East politics by the time I applied to graduate school and began my master’s program, and then a seminar on international migration in my doctoral program encouraged my interest in migration and diasporas.
While a Ph.D. student, the main focus of my dissertation was on the way Lebanese-Americans were connected with their homeland, and how host governments, in conjunction with diaspora communities, organized to influence the politics of the diaspora’s home state. I did research in Lebanon and Syria for my dissertation, which was a particularly memorable part of my graduate school experience. It is devastating to read about all the destruction and suffering that has taken place in Syria since the war began in 2011. The final product of my research, covering multiple additional diasporas was my book, Ask What You Can Do for Your New Country: How Host States Use Diasporas, which came out with Oxford University Press in 2017.
In my future research, I want to focus on the political experiences of Arab-Americans, in the context of the modern-day political changes taking place in our multicultural society. It connects my interest in the Middle East with my interest in migration.
One of my Ph.D. students and I wrote a paper focusing on how diaspora communities in metropolitan Detroit had responded to the Travel Ban, which we expect will be published in 2021. We had the chance to conduct first-hand interviews with immigrant organizations in metropolitan Detroit, looking at how they organized to respond to this policy. I feel fortunate to be in Michigan, which is one of the places to conduct exciting new research on diaspora communities in the US.One of my favorite books is Gender in International Relations written by J. Ann Tickner, who was one of my mentors at the University of Southern California. She pioneered the discipline of Gender in International relations. Her works, including this book, address many of the issues that the discipline of international relations had ignored for decades- how we can conceptualize and think about gender, and how often gender is excluded from policy discussions. If we fully incorporated the role of women, we could have much more sustainable economic development and equitable political decisions. Often decisions about peace and war are made without accounting for the role of the less powerful members of society, and those often include women worldwide. The book came out in the early 1990s, and, fortunately, since then, gender in international relations has grown as a discipline, and the role of women, both in policymaking and in academia has increased in scope and significance globally.
My favorite role model will probably always be my mother, but I have been so lucky to benefit from the generosity of so many role models over the years, from Ruth J. Carter, a world traveler who was my adviser as an undergraduate, to Sylvia Maier at Georgia Tech, to Laurie Brand, Patrick James and Azade-Ayse Rorlich, whom I met while a Ph.D. student at the University of Southern California. I think what defines all these people is not only that they were very accomplished intellectually but that they took the time and energy to share and had the great generosity to be not only professors but also mentors, which makes all the difference