I am a “decolonial scholartivist”--meaning I infuse the intentional playfulness and activism of performance praxis into my scholarship and teaching. My work intersects Middle East North African identity politics, performance studies, arts-based community-based performance, digital humanities, and ecofeminist art-science devising.

My research is the first to utilize applied theatre to highlight Egyptian women’s contributions to MENA decoloniality efforts and identity formation, as well as participation in sustainable development. My dissertation (February 2023), Performing Decolonial Egyptian Feminism, presented a foundational theoretical praxis for conducting applied and devised theatre in Egypt. I was nationally recognized by the Egyptian Minister of Expatriate Affairs (2018) and the Ministry of Education in Aswan (2019) for my ecofeminist community-based research with young women. My current book project expands on this research to explore decolonial feminist artvism in Egypt in the 20th and 21st centuries.

My publications appear in theatre and social science journals ranging from Theatre Topics and RiDE, to PloS One; and Environmental Communication. I have devised multi-disciplinary site-specific pieces and facilitated applied performance and Playback with hundreds of participants internationally, ranging from creative climate communication with scientists, to youth-centered workshops for the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

My current creative research projects include (1) The Butterfly Affect, recently featured at the UN CSW; and (2) a new piece by HERitage emBODYment performance ensemble, that was awarded the New England Foundation of the Arts National Theatre Project Creation and Touring Grant 2025.

I am a founding member and immediate past chair of the Middle Eastern Theatre focus group at the Association of Theatre in Higher Education, where I’m co-leading the development of the “MENA Theatre Handbook: A Digital Guide to MENA Plays and Scholarship.” I am also a past member of MENATMA’s Educators Circle. I currently serve on the American Society for Theatre Research Executive Board (2025-2028).

I’m am an Assistant Professor of Theatre and Performance Research, and affiliate faculty of Women and Gender Studies, as well as the Honors in the Major Liaison for the School of Theatre at Florida State University. My MA and PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies are from the University of Colorado Boulder, where I was also a member of the Child Language Learning Lab in Speech and Language Hearing Sciences, and pursued a graduate certificate in Cognitive Sciences. I hold two Bachelor degrees in Arts Administration and in Theatre, with a minor in Studio Art (Fiber) from the University of Kentucky.