I received my doctorate from the University of Toronto Department for the Study of Religion in 2018, and am currently heading to teach courses like Rhetoric and Introduction to the Academic Study of Religion at Habib University in Karachi, Pakistan.
I have worked as a professional translation for the EU asylum support network as a translation for Syrian asylum applicants on the Greek Islands, and continue to work as interpreter, translator, and cultural broker for Syrian newcomers to Toronto. I am also a research associate on a SSHRC/IRCC project, for which I have conducted interviews (which I have then translated and transcribed) with Syrian newcomer mothers to Canada who have children in the public school system.
My dissertation research has demonstrated that rhetorical speech, the type of speech that stimulates the emotional imagination of the audience, is sometimes associated with religious polemic and sometimes with political polemic. The dissertation tracks the way that three rationalist philosophers in the Arabic tradition (which is both Muslim and Jewish) dealt with the danger of rhetorical speech in the realm of politics.
My publications span medieval Jewish philosophy, current international relations in the Middle East, and reflections on important works of literature.
I learned Arabic while living in Syrian, and have been using it professionally since 2008. I have created and taught multi courses at the St. George campus of the University of Toronto, as well as taught hundreds of students in tutorials.
I am, fundamentally, attracted to the gaps in what we know. Upon completion of my dissertation, I intend to embark on the first ever academic translation of Maimonides' Eight Chapters from the original Judeo-Arabic into English. I have lived in the US, Canada, Japan, Lebanon, Syria, and other counties in the Levant, and I incorporate those experiences into the courses I teach.