I am a sociocultural anthropologist-in-training in the Doctoral Program in HASTS (History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society) at MIT, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the United States. My current research draws upon medical anthropology, linguistic anthropology, and science and technology studies to study deaf and signing communities in Jordan and the broader Middle East, and I am advised by Stefan Helmreich, Elting E. Morison Professor of Anthropology. I am also a Graduate Fellow in the Language and Technology Lab directed by Graham Jones and Beth Semel. My doctoral research examines how advancements in assistive technologies of various kinds (medical-rehabilitative, like hearing aids and cochlear implants, and non-medical, like cellphones and mobile apps) affect how deaf people in Jordan conceive of themselves as deaf—or not—and the role of religion (both Christianity and Islam) in Jordanian interactions with these technologies. I am currently conducting dissertation fieldwork in Amman, where I am also the 2021-22 Sijal Scholar at the Sijal Institute for Arabic Language and Culture—please reach out if you are around!

As a hearing researcher of deaf communities and a non-Middle Eastern scholar of the Arab world, I am committed to reflexivity in my methodological and theoretical approach. I am also interested in refugee and migrant movements in the Middle East, in addition to the history and anthropology of Arab Christianity in historic Palestine, particularly in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Recently, I conducted some research on sign language and the deaf community in Singapore. I am a Young National University of Singapore (NUS) Fellow affiliated with Anthropology at Yale-NUS College for AY2020-22, as well as a member of the American Anthropological Association and of the VL2 Student Network at Gallaudet University. My research is supported by the Social Science Research Council, the Royal Anthropological Institute, the MIT Center for International Studies, and the NUS Development Grant.

In 2021, my paper, "Mother Tongue Orphan: Multiculturalism and the Challenge of Sign Language in Singapore," received the Honorable Mention for the Society for East Asian Anthropology Prize for Outstanding Graduate Student Paper. In 2020, my paper, "Language in Medical Worlds: The Politics of Hearing Technology, Speaking, and Arabic for Deaf Children in Jordan," was awarded the Graduate Student Paper Prize by the Middle East Studies Association and received the Honorable Mention for the Student Paper Award from the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association, and a revised version was published recently in Medical Anthropology.