Maysam Taher is an Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU. She holds a Ph.D. and a M.A. in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies from New York University, and a B.A. from the University of California, Irvine. Working across Political Theory, Critical and Postcolonial Theory, and Cultural Studies, her research is broadly concerned with conceptualizing borders as institutions that order, re/produce and regulate political, social, economic, cultural, and psychic life. Her project "Borders in Disrepair" combined fieldwork and archival research to track the transformations of the Central Mediterranean border between Libya and Italy from 1911-2011, drawing out of this particular geography a history of our global present. Taher’s emergent interests include materialist and psychoanalytic approaches to the entanglements of fascism and colonialism, comparative approaches to the Mediterranean and US-Mexico border, and examinations of the current effects of global capitalism and the destruction of place on knowledge production.
Taher has been a fellow at the NYU Urban Democracy Lab and the NYU Center for the Humanities, and has previously taught courses in the departments of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies; Media, Culture and Communication; and at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study.