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Jonathan Albert Ball
First Year
Email: jab1316@nyu.edu
Jon graduated cum laude from Williams College in 2017 with a B.A. in Political Economy and Arabic Studies. Immediately thereafter, he moved to Northern Greece to begin working as a translator and interpreter at a legal aid nonprofit. He spent only the summer there, however, before accepting an offer from his alma mater’s Department of Arabic Studies to serve as a teaching associate for 2017-2018. After making a hasty return to the Berkshire Mountains, Jon happily spent an additional year studying, teaching, and skiing. He also served as a TA in History during his time at Williams, and has since worked as a graduate intern for Middlebury’s Arabic Language School, of which he is an alumnus.Jon focuses primarily on regimes of migration and mobility. He has previously worked with refugees and migrants in Amman and Thessaloniki, as well as his hometown of Buffalo, NY. While at NYU, he hopes to further study Israeli-Palestinian history, and is currently learning Modern Hebrew.
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Sarah Blume
First Year
Email: snb438@nyu.edu
Sarah graduated from the University of Michigan in 2016 with a BA in International Studies and Middle Eastern & North African Studies. She was previously the Communications Assistant for the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) in New York City, where she worked on advocacy for the U.S. refugee admissions program and assisted in litigation and policy efforts against the Muslim ban. Prior to IRAP, she served as the media assistant at the Alkarama Foundation in Geneva, where she worked on a media advocacy campaign about arbitrary detention in Saudi Arabia, and also as the co-director of the Ann Arbor Palestine Film Festival for two years. Sarah studied Arabic in Oman through the Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) program in 2014 and has also spent time studying and volunteering in Jordan and the West Bank. She is particularly interested in migration, political resistance, and the mobilization of international human rights mechanisms in responding to regional conflicts.
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Moneeza BURNEY
First Year
Email: mb6856@nyu.edu
Moneeza Burney grew up in Lahore, Pakistan. She graduated with Honors from Sheffield Hallam University, UK, with a degree in Business Economics in 2013. After returning, she worked as a Program Director at the Lahore Students Union (LSU), a non-profit community center in Lahore, running a youth volunteer program called the Community Service Initiative (LSU-CSI), which has placed 900+ volunteers at 65+ NGOs over the last 4 years and incubated over 20 social projects by student volunteers through its Youth Social Leadership Program (YSLP). The program received international recognition from organizations and institutes around the world. With that, she has played a pivotal role as a research associate and scriptwriter for a local comic book company where she worked on the critically acclaimed 'Paasban - the Guardian' series' about violent extremism, as well as public service messages for NGOs working on causes ranging from gender empowerment to mental health. In her free time, she has been writing for DAWN newspaper, Pakistan's leading English daily, since 2013. She hopes to explore her different interests at Kevo with the hope to work on youth development in the region, with focus on the IDPs and refugees
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Corinne CURTIS
First Year
Email: cc5757@nyu.edu
Corinne graduated in 2017 from UMass Amherst with a B.A. in Political Science and Middle Eastern Studies and a Five-College International Relations Certificate. In 2016, she studied abroad in Amman, Jordan through the UMass International Scholars Program and as a 2015- 2016 David L. Boren Scholar, which led to her thesis on Hashemite custodianship of Muslim holy places in Jerusalem. She recently returned from Amman, where she completed a Fulbright U.S. Student Research grant during which she continued her study of Arabic through a Critical Language Enhancement Award. Her Fulbright research expanded her thesis work to look at Hashemite Custodianship through an international relations lens and the results of this research led her to a broader interest on conflicts over public and religious space in Jerusalem. She is also interested in the role of gender in conflict and conflict resolution, something which she looks forward to exploring more during her time at Kevo.
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KITANEH Fitzpatrick
First Year
Email: kbf272@nyu.edu
Kitaneh is originally from Paris, France and graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 2017. At Sarah Lawrence, Kitaneh concentrated in Middle Eastern history, gender and sexuality studies, and comparative literature. To bolster her research capabilities in the field, Kitaneh completed an accelerated Persian course at the University of Maryland in the summer of 2017, where she received the University’s Summer Institute Scholarship. Her academic interests include the varying forms of female agency and political resistance in contemporary Iranian popular culture. In addition to Persian, she speaks French and Spanish.
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LYNETTE Hacopian
First Year
Email: lh2726@nyu.edu
Lynette graduated from UC Berkeley in 2016 with a B.S. in Environmental Economics and Policy. After graduation, she served as a Research Fellow at Regional Studies Center, an independent think-tank in Armenia, where she conducted open source analysis and published two papers on regional, economic, and security issues pertaining to the South Caucasus and geopolitics of the Middle East. Afterwards, Lynette was a Research Assistant at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies in Israel, where she analyzed wastewater treatment options in the Arava Valley, as well as techniques to develop, implement, and evaluate on-farm treatment technologies for the safe and successful use of non-traditional water sources. At Al-Quds University, Lynette worked on a USAID-funded project regarding the framework for treated wastewater usage for the date palm crop in various districts of Jericho, in collaboration with the Jericho Department of Agriculture, to gather information on water flow discharge from natural springs, assess project development needs, and analyze ten years’ worth of climate and soil data using Irrigation software.
At NYU, Lynette hopes to continue her research on the intersection of politics and environmental issues related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well as explore the history of Babylonian-Iraqi Jewry. When not studying, you can find her playing the piano and looking at memes.
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Robin jones
First Year
Email: rnj239@nyu.edu
Robin studied Anthropology and Politics at Bates College, graduating with a BA in 2015. As an undergraduate, he conducted fieldwork on right-wing movements and anti-Muslim sentiment in Sri Lanka. More recently, he worked with several organizations focused on the Palestinian question, including Mada al-Carmel, the Arab Culture Association, and Visualizing Palestine. His writing on Middle Eastern politics has been featured in The Electronic Intifada and The New Arab. He is interested in conducting research on the mobilization of human rights discourses during the Syrian revolution and exploring various postcolonial critiques of the human rights framework in this context.
maiwelle mezi
Email: mm10074@nyu.edu
Maiwelle is an exchange student at the Kevorkian Center for the Fall 2018 semester; she is from The Paris Institute of Political Studies.
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SARAH Mokh
First Year
Email: sm7964@nyu.edu
Sarah Mokh graduated from Harvard University with a BA in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and English. Her interests include Arabic literature, Islamic philosophy and theology, Shi'ism and sectarianism, and contemporary issues of Islam and modernity.
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MATEO NELSON
First Year
Email: mhn273@nyu.edu
Mateo graduated with honors from Princeton University in 2014 with a Bachelor of Arts in Near Eastern Studies and a concentration in Arabic. Upon graduating, Mateo moved to Amman, Jordan, where he completed a year of intensive Arabic study through the Center for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA) fellowship. After completing the fellowship, Mateo worked as a reporter, translator and editor at a journalism nonprofit organization based in Amman covering Syria for the past three years. Informed by his background in journalism and work on Syria, Mateo’s research interests include media representations of the Middle East and the ways in which identities and self-understandings are being shaped and reshaped in modern Syria and the Levant in interaction with traumatic processes of violence, siege, displacement and community ruptures. He is also interested in LGBTQ communities, political art, grassroots organizing and the sociopolitical dynamics of large-scale destruction and reconstruction efforts in Syria.
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holly pickett
First Year
Email: hmp338@nyu.edu
Holly Pickett is an independent visual journalist pursuing the Journalism / Near Eastern Studies dual MA. She earned bachelors’ degrees in history and journalism from the University of Montana in Missoula. She worked as a staff photographer at The Spokesman-Review newspaper in Washington State, then relocated to Cairo, Egypt, to work as a freelance photojournalist. She spent nearly a decade based first in Cairo, and later in Istanbul, working for international news outlets especially in North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia. Though Holly has worked in conflict areas in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries, she seeks ways to humanize people, situations and events; her images often focus on daily life and the struggles and aspirations of ordinary people. She followed the story of an Iraqi refugee family she met in Cairo for nine years, as they eventually immigrated to the United States and became naturalized citizens. She reported from Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya during the Arab uprisings of 2011, and documented the Syrian refugee crisis in eight countries, including Syria. She was a 2008 Arthur F. Burns Journalism Fellow in Munich, Germany, and received a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting for a series documenting the lives of Syrian refugees in Europe, in 2014. She received the Kathryn Davis Fellowship for Peace to study Arabic at Middlebury College’s Summer Language School in 2017, and was a 2018 International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) African Great Lakes Reporting Initiative fellow and grantee in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Holly returned to the U.S. in 2017 and settled in NYC, where she continues to freelance while pursuing her master’s degree. Her interests include feminism in the Middle East, gender issues, social movements, conflict and conflict resolution, transitional justice, human migration, mass media, and press freedom and protection.
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AHMAD SAHLI
First Year
Email: as12409@nyu.edu
Ahmad graduated in 2013 from the University of Vermont where he studied finance, English, and statistics. His regional experiences include long-term stays in Lebanon, Palestine, the UAE, and Turkey, as well as five years spent living in Jordan. Ahmad returned to each of the aforementioned countries over the course of a year of self-study preceding his matriculation to NYU, and while in Palestine, volunteered on a crowdfunded skatepark construction project organized by SkatePal. In the years prior he worked at a technology start up in Manhattan. At NYU, Ahmad is interested in exploring the ways in which western liberal economic and social policies impact class structure in contemporary Amman, and looks forward to learning modern Turkish.
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MERYEM UZUMCU
First Year
Email: mru221@nyu.edu
Meryem graduated from Rutgers University in 2017, where she triple majored in Middle Eastern Studies, Planning and Public Policy, and Women’s and Gender Studies. Her senior honors thesis explored global spectatorship of Turkish political actorship during the 2013 Gezi Park Protests in Taksim Square through Arendt’s Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy. For her research, she conducted interviews by traveling to Istanbul in 2017 through the Rutgers University Aresty Fellowship. Her research interests in political actorship and how it is historically linked to nation-state building logics in contemporary Turkey drives her current focus on the EU-Turkey deal implications of exchanging refugees for aid. She completed the CLS program in Amman, Jordan in 2014 and is excited to continue her studies as a student of Arabic language and Near Eastern Studies at the Kevorkian Center.
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Guy Yadin Evron
First Year
Email: gye202@nyu.edu
Guy grew up in Jerusalem and lived there for most of his life. In 2017, he graduated with honors from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, earning a BA in History. His bachelor's thesis examined the role the Hebrew University’s senior academic staff played in the institution’s decision to return to Mount Scopus in East Jerusalem after the 1967 War. After graduating, he spent the summer of 2018 studying Arabic in Rabat, Morocco. His research interests include the modern history of Israel/Palestine, institutions of knowledge in the Levant, and local conceptions of gender, citizenship, and civilization.
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MAYA YANG
First Year
Email: my1348@nyu.edu
Born and raised in the United Arab Emirates, Maya is an international student pursuing a joint M.A in Near Eastern studies and Journalism. Upon earning her B.A in Political Science and English from the University of California, Los Angeles, she worked at the regional news desk of CNN’s Abu Dhabi bureau and is a regular international rapporteur for the Los Angeles-based Center for Middle East Development. Maya is particularly interested in cultures of mass tourism in the Gulf, third-culture-kid identity crises, and UN involvement in the region’s conflict resolution processes. In her free time, Maya is an avid reader of long-form journalism and enjoys culinary experiments in her tiny kitchen.
JANNA ALADDIN
2nd year student
Email: jaladdin@nyu.edu
Janna graduated from Rutgers University in 2016 with a B.S./B.A. in Public health, Middle Eastern studies, and history where she focused on environmental history and the history of medicine in the Ottoman Empire. After Rutgers, she lived in Amman, Jordan through the Center for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA) fellowship where she focused on classical Arabic. When not conjugating Arabic words, she spent time working as a translator for various nonprofits. Her research interests include the history of modern Iraq, historiography, and the intellectual history of the Arab-speaking world. As a map nerd, she hopes to expand on her potential research through the use of spatial history.
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DOUNYA ALAMI-NASSIF
2nd year student
Email: dan310@nyu.edu
Dounya graduate from the University of Texas at Austin with a double BA in Government and IRG (International Relations and Global Studies) with minors focusing on Middle Eastern Studies and Arabic. She spent her summer of 2014 in Meknes, Morocco with the Critical Language Scholarship Program and returned for a year in 2015 with the Arabic Flagship Overseas Program to study the Moroccan and Egyptian dialects. For her award-winning IRG undergraduate thesis, she analyzed the connections between the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Irish Republican Army. She examined how Palestinian and Irish poets, painters, and political prisoners drew inspiration from anti-colonial discourse to develop a grammar of resistance that speaks on militant action and transnational solidarity as a means of political mobilization. Her current research interest require engaging with and comparing Hindi and Arabic literature, translation, and philosophical thought within satirical, poetic, and political works.
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GRACE ALBRIGHT
2nd year student
Email: ga974@nyu.edu
Grace’s university track actually originated in the realm of art and design. She graduated summa cum laude from Fashion Institute of Technology’s jewelry design program, and thereafter decided to follow her passion for language studies at NYU, where she earned a BA in German literature. Grace first took Arabic as an elective, a choice which ended up fueling her decision to pursue Middle Eastern studies. Her senior honor’s thesis led her to conduct research in Berlin, where she analyzed the impact of gentrification on an Arab community, using food culture as a tool to survey where and how distinct groups appropriate space. Grace’s study gave her contemporary insight on various issues, such as white hegemony and racism as a product of colonialism. She plans to continue examining oppressive social dynamics not only in diaspora communities, but also in the Middle East itself.
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AFNAN AL-YAFAEY
2nd year student
Email: aay262@nyu.edu
Afnan Al-Yafaey, native to Oman, graduated from the New School in 2017 with a BA in Psychology, and minors in Journalism and Japanese studies. Having focused mainly on cross-cultural psychology, she is interested in various representations of gender in Japan, Oman, and the US, more specifically comparing women’s conceptions of feminism in every day life amongst the three cultures. She is also interested in further exploring female sexuality in the Middle East, especially in the Islamic context and its relation to the hijab.
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GEORGE BOYAN
2nd year student
Email: gtb254@nyu.edu
George Boyan graduated with Honors from Wingate University in 2014 with a B.S. in Social Studies Education and a North Carolina Teaching Licensure. Upon graduation he taught a year of high school history in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, his hometown. Focusing mainly on a wide range of histories during his studies he later sparked an interest in the history of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic that has yet to subside. This led to the completion of a Fulbright Teaching Assistantship in Turkey, finishing in 2016. While living and working in Turkey, he studied Turkish and plans to continue his language studies at the Kevorkian Center. After spending a year working and continuing to study history on his own, he is excited to re-enter a formal setting to further his knowledge of Turkey and the wider region. His research interests include political, diplomatic and social history, as well as foreign policy, focusing on the late Ottoman Period and the early Turkish Republic. Including a strong interest in similar developments in Modern Turkey.
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Michael received his BA from Bard College in 2014. In 2015 he was awarded a Center for Arabic Study Abroad Fellowship to undertake a year-long Arabic intensive at the American University in Cairo. Prior to pursuing his MA at NYU's Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, Michael worked as Political Economy Project Coordinator for the Arab Studies Institute. Michael's interests include Arabic literature and film, Third World internationalism, translation studies, and Russian-Arabic literary encounters.
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GORDIYA KHADEMIAN
2nd year student
Email: gk1069@nyu.edu
Gordiya Khademian graduated from New York University in Spring 2017, where she majored in Politics and minored in Anthropology and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies. She spent this past summer in Tajikistan, studying Persian and Tajiki through the Critical Language Scholarship (CLS), as well as taking traditional Tajik dance lessons with the Padida Dance Troupe. Gordiya is broadly interested in nationalism, diasporic identity, and political anthropology in the Persian Gulf and Central Asia. She hopes to explore conceptions of identity and how these conceptions interact with state institutions and how dance and music can be seen as political forms of expression. Gordiya wants to continue her study of Persian and is thinking about learning Russian or Arabic in the future. In her free time, she likes dogs, dancing, and dessert.
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COURTNEY GRAVES
2nd year student
Email: cg3063@nyu.edu
Courtney graduated with honors from University of Texas at Austin with a dual BA in Arabic Language & Literature and Middle Eastern Studies. Shortly before pursuing her MA in Near East Studies at the Kevorkian center, she was awarded a Center for Arabic Study Abroad fellowship for study at the Qasid Institute in Amman, Jordan. Courtney's interests include historical and anthropological approaches to humanitarianism, humanitarian governance, neoliberalism, and NGOs.
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SARAH LOUDEN
2nd year student
Email: srl461@nyu.edu
After receiving a BFA in Creative Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011, Sarah went on to study part-time at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Southern Maine where she focused on Middle Eastern Studies, Sociology, and Arabic language. She spent the past two academic years working in her hometown of Portland, Maine within the refugee and immigrant community where she helped students with English language acquisition. Her research interests include nationalism and Zionism, institutionalized racism and mass incarceration.
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EGINA MANACHOVA
2nd year student
Email: em3600@nyu.edu
Egina Manachova is a writer and program curator based in New York. Her work is focused on the role of Central Asia in Russian and Middle East geo-politics. She is particularly interested in thinking through authoritarianism and how the "War on Terror" is framed and shaped in the region. She was born in Tashkent, raised in Houston, and went to school in Philadelphia.
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HAJARA MASOOD
2nd year student
Email: hm1013@nyu.edu
Hajara Masood is an Adjunct Instructor of Arabic and 2016 graduate of Hunter College, where she majored in Religion and minored in Arabic, Asian-American Studies, and Math. For her undergraduate thesis, she analyzed the sacred dimension of the Arabic language, often neglected in linguistic discourse. In the summer of 2016, she studied Modern Standard Arabic at the advanced level in Ibri, Oman through the Critical Language Scholarship (CLS). She is currently doing her MA in Near Eastern Studies at the Kevorkian Center where her many research interests include sociolinguistics, Arab and Asian American identity formation, and language pedagogy.
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ALEX MATIKA
2nd year student
Email: alm867@nyu.edu
Alex graduated in 2013 from the University of Virginia with a B.A. in Religious Studies, while studying Arabic in both Jordan and Lebanon. After graduating, he worked in Washington, D.C. for a documentary film nonprofit that focuses on increasing interfaith understanding. In 2015, he began working in community development at Broadway United Church of Christ, one of New York City's historic faith communities. Alex's academic interests include Arabic intellectual history, dramatic literature and performance in the Middle East and North Africa, translation studies, and Critical Theory.
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JONATHAN PERRY
2nd year student
Email: jp4871@nyu.edu
Jonathan, also known as "Yoni", grew up in the town of Kfar-Saba, Israel. He graduated from Tel-Aviv University with a dual B.A in Middle Eastern Studies and Political Science, and his thesis focused on the historiographical debate around the causes leading to the Egyptian “open door” economic policy in the 70’s-80’s. His main interests are economic and business relations within the region. More specifically, topics like Islamic Finance, regional entrepreneurship, and the impact of venture capital on small and medium sized business initiatives. In order to gain a thorough grasp of these matters, Yoni is part of the “Business Track”, through which he takes MBA courses in the fields of Economics and Business. Yoni is also interested in journalism, and the role of the Jewish community in Iraqi classical music, but those are really just for fun.
In addition to his academic personality, Yoni is also a professional musician (well, a drummer), and he claims to have moved to New York just for the bagels, 'cause they taste like heaven.'
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BRIAN PLUNGIS
2nd year student
Email: bjp346@nyu.edu
Brian graduated from New York University in 2017 with a M.A. in Cinema Studies. Before then, he graduated in 2014 with dual B.A. degrees in Film Studies and Political Science from Trinity College (CT). Outside of academia, Brian has personal filmmaking and directing experience, pre-production experience at Lionsgate Entertainment, and television and radio production experience at CBS News. His primary research interest concerns on post-revolutionary Iranian cinema, with other interests including the political economy of cinema in the Persian Gulf, disability studies, and the construction of social justice narratives through media.
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EMILY ROJAS
2nd year student
Email: egr256@nyu.edu
Emily graduated from UNC Chapel Hill in 2015 with a B.A. in Journalism and Mass Communication. During her time at UNC, she also studied Spanish and Modern Hebrew, which sparked her interest in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Her consequent visits to Palestine and Israel on an archaeological dig furthered her interest in the region, specifically in the areas of systemic racism and the role of Israeli settlements.
Emily looks forward to studying Arabic and expanding her knowledge of the Middle East at the Kevorkian Center.
Outside of class, Emily enjoys writing Spanish and English poetry, trying new foods, and quoting Shakespeare whenever possible.
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JESSICA ROHAN
2nd year student
Email: jmr625@nyu.edu
Jess Rohan is from Bucks County, Pennsylvania. She is in the joint program in journalism and Near East studies. Jess has worked as a grant writer, a journalist, and in marketing for a travel company. As an undergraduate, she studied sociology, anthropology, and conflict, with a focus on the Middle East and North Africa. Her research interests include whiteness, imagined communities, and surveillance.
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ZUHA SIDDIQUI
2nd year student
Email: zas283@nyu.edu
Zuha Siddiqui is a journalist and a second-year student in a joint-MA program at the NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies. She is also a Falak Sufi Scholar. At Kevo, Zuha has been researching migration patterns of Afghan refugees in Pakistan. Her thesis focuses on questions of citizenship, bureaucracy and surveillance.
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TREY STRANGE
2nd year student
Email: tjs515@nyu.edu
Trey Strange is a writer from Fort Worth, Texas. A recent graduate from University of Houston, where he studied Journalism and Middle East Studies with minors in English and Creative Work, he's interested in international minorities with a particular focus on immigrants, refugees, and LGBTQ populations.
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ALIASGHAR (SHAHAB) TAGHIPOURTEROUJENI
2nd year student
Email: at3650@nyu.edu
Shahab graduated from Allame Tabatabai University in Tehran in 2017, with a BA and an MA in Sociology. In his studies, he examined instances when writing and design break away from arborescent dualistic forms derived from historical socio-linguistic norms.
His interests lie in visual culture, from traditional pre-modern Eastern visual performance to Western and transnational digital experimental cinema and new visual communication technologies. Shahab was winner of Global Research Initiatives fellowship in the summer of 2018 ,when he traveled to Prague to conduct fieldwork in Republic Czech New Wave cinema.
In his MA thesis at NYU, he is writing about video messaging applications (Dubsmash and Instagram) through online ethnography and semiotic analysis. He highlights the various ways that simplicity in new video technologies give new opportunities to ordinary people to be more than passive spectators and analyzes how social media developed new ways of visual storytelling in Iranian post-revolutionary society, which is based on multiculturalism, trans-language and transnational exchange of ideas, culture and life style.
Shahab recently finished his first short novel called, Ruye Khate Vizhe or “In the Emergency Lane,” an auto-fiction about everyday life in the Tehran buses, which is awaiting publication. He also creates short films and is interested in visual activism as a means of political and non-violent resistance.
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Neo yi zhang
2nd year student
Email: at3650@nyu.edu
Neo Yi Zhang graduated from Beijing Language and Culture University in 2016 with a B.A. in Arabic Language and Literature. He completed Arabic training in Egypt through his university's exchange program. Prior to joining the Kevorkian Center, He worked for the Arabic Department at China Radio International based in Beijing, broadcasting news, current affairs and politics from the Middle East. His research interests broadly include the modern history of Egypt, urban development in the Middle East, as well as the impacts and consequences of Neoliberal Globalization. Currently, he is doing research on Chinese FDI in Egypt and its implications to the MENA region.
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BRADEN ALEXANDER YOUNANI
2nd year student
Email: bay219@nyu.edu
Braden graduated from New York University in 2017, receiving a degree in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies from the undergraduate department at Kevorkian Center. His primary research interests include the social politics of sport and the exchange of media between the United States and Iran. Braden is the proud owner of two adorable dogs, Zeba and Zeus, who are awaiting the completion of his degree back in his hometown of Los Angeles.
ROHAN ADVANI
Email: ra2465@nyu.edu
Thesis Title: "Port Politics: A Political Economy of the Beirut Port in the Post-Civil War Period"
Rohan graduated from Georgetown University in 2016 with a B.S. in Foreign Service, where he majored in Regional and Comparative Studies (Middle East) and focused on themes broadly relating to political economy and economic history. He also studied Arabic in both Jordan and Morocco. His undergraduate thesis examined free trade zones in Palestine and their effect on development. His research and academic interests include class formation, state formation, migrant labour, and the spatial aspects of global capitalism. Outside of academics and other exercises in self-imposed misery, there’s nothing he loves more than laying down funky bass lines.
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ORUBBA ALMANSOURI
Email: oaa234@nyu.edu
Thesis Title: "Yemeni Weddings: Processes of Ethical Formation"
Orubba Almansouri is a native of Yemen. In 2016, she graduated with Honors as Salutatorian of the City College of New York with a B.A in History and English. As a Mellon Mays Fellow she worked on researching the intersection of oral traditions and literature in the works of Yemeni author Nadia Al-Kokabani and the importance of oral poetry and folklore in Yemen. Orubba aims to continue her journey in learning how Muslim women plot themselves into history and their contributions to and roles in oral traditions and cultures of the Middle East. Going through this journey as a scholar and creative writer she aspires to discover her inner stories in the process of documenting and preserving the rich Yemeni folklore. Orubba will utilize her education at the Kevorkian center to prepare for a doctoral degree in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies focusing on the Arabian Peninsula, and to continue advocating for girls education and social justice.
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ADHAM ALOK
Email: aa173@nyu.edu
Thesis Title: "UD Aid and Syrian Nationalism: Chapter in Cold WAr History"
Adham graduated from the University of Aleppo with B.A. in Law. In the summer of 2016, he visited both Lebanon and Syria where in Syria he worked with local grass-roots organizations that help internal displaced families. His academic interests are political theory, contemporary Syrian politics, political economy, globalization, forced migration, and Islamic movements. He work at New York University, Division of Libraries /Middle Eastern Collection.
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ANNABEL BRUNO
Email: arb698@nyu.edu
Thesis Title: "Order, Legibility, and Commissions of Inquiry in Mandate Palestine."
Annabel Bruno is a Vermonter according to most. She graduated in 2013 with honors and distinction from McGill University with a B.A. in International Development Studies and a minor in Middle Eastern Languages. Her research interests touch upon issues of settler-colonialism, gender, whiteness, and the politics of solidarity and activism and are inspired by experiences in Palestine, Jordan, Toronto and elsewhere. Outside of school she is excited to learn about NYC, practice Arabic and get involved in community organizing.
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MIRAY CAKIROGLU
Email: mc6269@nyu.edu
Thesis Title: "The Uses of Ancestors: Mobilizing the Tomb of Suleyman Shah"
Miray Cakiroglu graduated from Bogazici University in 2010 with a BA degree in Western Languages and Literatures and a double major in Philosophy with High Honors. She completed her MA in Critical and Cultural Studies in 2014 at the same university with her thesis titled “Reconstructing the City and the Urban Citizen through the ‘Istanbul Courses’”. Investigating the Istanbul course books in terms of their world construct, conception of history and urban identity, she argued that the city is defined as a ‘postcard space’ and the urban citizen is expected to perform the roles of a spectator, tourist, and a tourist guide. Miray worked as a research assistant at Istanbul Bilgi University, Department of Arts and Cultural Management. She is also a published poet with her book Taslarin Sesi Kesildi, which won the Yasar Nabi Nayir Poetry Prize in 2014. She regularly writes on art, society and literature for the Turkish literary magazine Varlik. Her research interests include modern Turkey, sociology of the Middle East, and ethnographic methods
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JORDAN DANIELS
Email: jd3289@nyu.edu
Thesis Title: "American Cotton Manufactures and the 19th Century Indian Ocean Market"
Jordan Daniels graduated from Georgetown University in 2012 with a B.S. in Foreign Service. She has completed Arabic training in Amman, Jordan, and Cairo, Egypt, through the Critical Languages Scholarship (CLS) program and Center for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA) fellowship, respectively. Prior to joining the Kevorkian Center, she worked for a development implementer based in Turkey providing food, medical, and logistical assistance to communities in Syria. Her research interests broadly include the modern history of Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, as well as Kurdish and Turkmen participation in the Syrian conflict.
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YASMEEN MOBAYED
Email: yom208@nyu.edu
Thesis Title: "The State, the Media, and Moral Panic: The Criminalization of Syrian Refugees and the Securitization of Lebanon"
Yasmeen Mobayed graduated from the University of California, San Diego in 2015 with a degree in Ethnic Studies. Her thesis, "Education Under Siege: Learning Beyond Trauma", focused on community-based psychosocial programs offered to traumatized youth living under siege in Damascus. Beyond her academic work, she has translated extensively for several grassroots organizations and for the Local Coordination Committees of Syria. In 2012, she joined a humanitarian relief trip to Northern Syria to provide aid to refugee camps and to meet with local councils. She is broadly interested in migrant labor movements, neoliberalism, class formations, gender, and sexuality and hopes to explore these themes at NYU.
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FATIMA MOHIE-ELDIN
Email: fme224@nyu.edu
Thesis Title: "Subverting the Self: The Formation of National Subjectivities in Turkey through Psychological and Psychiatric Discourse's Displacement of Religious Belief as Behavior"
Fatima Mohie-Eldin graduated Magna Cum Laude from Boston University in 2015, where she majored in International Relations. With minors in Religion and Muslim Societies as well, she chose to research the intersection of Islamism and politics in Egypt for her award-winning senior honors thesis, which focused on the Salafist Nour Party, including the party's religious underpinnings, formation, and prospects for future political participation. She has had excerpts of her research published on Muftah.org and in the Al Noor Journal of Middle Eastern Studies at Boston College. Fatima is excited to be joining the Hagop Kevorkian Center where she hopes to focus her future research on the role of women and gender in Middle Eastern societies, the intersections of state and civil society, Islam and politics, and the social role of religious communities, particularly within Egypt and Turkey, where she previously lived from 2013-2014.
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LOUBNA MRIE
Email: lm3127@nyu.edu
Thesis Title: "From Uprising to Civil War: Narrating the Syrian Uprising fron NonViolent Revolution to a Militarized Conflict"
Loubna Mrie is a Syrian activist who participated in the initial stages of the revolution. She later became a photojournalist with Reuters based in Aleppo, where she covered the ongoing conflict in the Idlib, Aleppo, Latakia, and Hama governorates. Originally from the Syrian coastal city of Jableh, she is currently based in New York City where she is a researcher and commentator on Syrian and Middle Eastern affairs. Her work has been published in the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Foreign Policy, the New Republic, among other publications.
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SABA NASEEM
Email: sn2241@nyu.edu
Thesis Title: "Politics of Exclusion and Securitization: How the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community has become a Target of Anti-Terror Legislation in Pakistan"
Saba Naseem graduated from the University of Arkansas with a B.A. in Journalism (with a concentration in the Middle East) and French. Her interest in Western media coverage of the Middle East led to an honors thesis that looked at the depictions of Muslim and Arab women in American print media post 9/11. Saba’s passion for Arabic took her twice to Morocco (Tangier and Rabat) and later to Amman, Jordan through the Critical Language Scholarship program. After graduation, Saba worked for the Smithsonian Magazine in Washington, D.C. and most recently completed a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship in Turkey. Her research interests include gender-based violence and forced migration and she looks forward to continuing her studies in Arabic.
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ISAAC OSEAS
Email: io429@nyu.edu
Thesis Title: "Anti-Communist Modernization and Turkey's Dependence on the West"
Isaac Oseas majored in History and minored in Economics at The New School, and was published in the academic journal Economia Politica for a review of book “The Battle of Bretton Woods” by Benn Steil. For his undergraduate thesis, he wrote on the economic factors behind national self-determination movements in the late Ottoman Empire. Isaac has since worked as a journalist writing on developments in Turkish politics, as well as the NYPD’s surveillance of Muslims. His academic interests include: economic development, international relations in Central Asia, and nationalism. Outside of academia, he enjoys antiwar literature, early jazz music, and Halloween.
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LIBBY PERKOWSKI
Email: lp1556@nyu.edu
A New York City native, Libby graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown University, where she studied Chinese, Italian and Art History. She worked in private equity for several years before embarking on a year-long solo backpacking trip around the world, which took her to Turkey, Jordan, Egypt and Morocco. In 2010, Libby moved to Istanbul, where she lived and worked for three years before returning to New York to work in international higher education. Libby’s interests include modern Turkish society and politics and how the current global geopolitical landscape is impacting national identity in former imperial powers, in particular Turkey and China.
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ALISA JOYCE RUDY
Email: ajr679@nyu.edu
Thesis Title: "Wilayat Sina': The Two States of Sinai"
Alisa graduated summa cum laude from the CUNY Baccalaureate Program for Interdisciplinary Studies at the City University of New York with a B.A. in both Middle East Studies and World Literature. Her senior thesis focused on Mizrahi Jews and their integration into Israeli society and politics. She hopes to expand her study of minorities within Israeli and Palestinian societies and communities, as well as the cultural products of such dynamics. Raised in Brooklyn, New York, she speaks Hebrew, Italian and Arabic, the latter upon which she hopes to improve during her time at Kevo. She does not like any kind of chocolate.
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EZEL SAHINKAYA
Email: es4288@nyu.edu
Thesis Title: "Competitio and Contradition in Social Democracy in Turkey: An Analysis of the Republican People's Party's Approach to the Syrian Refugees"
Ezel graduated in 2016 from Boğaziçi University with a BA degree in Political Science and International Relations. During her undergraduate years, she gained experience in the two worlds of research: academia and journalism. She worked as a student assistant for Turkish Politics class, and led discussion sessions for political science sophomores. She was a research assistant for Prof. Hakan Yılmaz in his project of “Frames, Meanings, Actions: Political Choices in Modern Turkey”. She also carried out multiple internships in media. She worked in the national daily Cumhuriyet, TEMPO magazine, +1 TV and t24.com.tr and wrote various stories on political developments in Turkey and abroad. She spent her summer of 2015 in Budapest, Hungary with an internship at Center for Independent Journalism. Her research interests include broad topics as political regime in Turkey, Syrian refugees and their perception on integration to Turkey.
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JESSICA SALLEY
Email: jcs795@nyu.edu
Thesis Title: "Back to Ayia Marina: Finding Home and Making Peace in Divided Cyprus"
Jessica Salley is a first-year student in the joint Journalism and Near Eastern Studies program. Jessica graduated in 2014 from Harvard College with a degree in History and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, with a focus on the history of the Ottoman Empire and the early Turkish Republic. Following graduation, she held a fellowship at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., where she created academic and outreach programming for elementary, high school, and undergraduate students. At NYU, she will study national identity and urban space Turkey.
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SHANDANA WAHEED
Email: sw3537@nyu.edu
Thesis Title: "From Present to Past, Through Cracks and Crevices, Palmpsest and ruination of architectural heritage in post-partition Pawalpindi. "
Shandana graduated from Forman Christian College in Lahore, Pakistan in spring 2016 with double majors in history and political science and a minor in sociology. She joins the Kevorkian Center as the 7th Falak Sufi Memorial Scholar. She interned with Punjab archives in the summer of 2015 and later became a part of the pilot study team for the archives digitalization project. She worked at Forman from 2014 to 2015. Her undergrad thesis was a theoretical study of lost cultural identity of post-colonial Punjab in the light of Fanon and Nandy. She is mainly interested in partition narratives, the post colonial state of Pakistan and the politics & culture of language, traditions, festivals, folklores, oral history and cinema. She aims to pursue a doctorate to pursue her interests in Punjab in the context of decolonization and the comparative study of south Asia and other post colonial states as well as contribute towards women empowerment through education in the region.