University of Ottawa
Dr. Emily Regan Wills is an assistant professor of comparative and American politics at the University of Ottawa. She co-directs the Community Mobilization in Crisis project, documenting and supporting community organizing and mobilization in the Arab world. Her work focuses around transnational linkages and connections between the Arab world, its diasporas, and North America, as well as everyday politics, social movements, and transnationalism more broadly. Her first book, Arab New York: Words, Politics, and Identities in Everyday Life, is forthcoming from New York University Press.
Dr. Nadia Abu-Zahra is Associate Professor of International Development and Global Studies. She is a member of the Human Rights Research and Education Centre at the University of Ottawa, and of the Reconciliation Committee of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. She was previously based at the University of Oxford, and has worked on projects for Oxfam International, UNICEF, the European Union, and Global Affairs Canada.
Diana El Richani is a Beiruti anthropologist based in Ottawa and is currently the Project Manager of the Community Mobilization in Crisis project. She holds a BA in Sociology and Anthropology, with a double major in Philosophy, from the American University of Beirut. Most recently, she holds an MA in Anthropology from the University of Ottawa. Her MA thesis focused on the political imaginaries of the alternative and the ways through which they navigated the complex political terrain during the Beirut municipality elections in 2016. Her interests include social movements and community mobilizations in the Middle East, relationships to the state and its apparatuses, and extends to questions on postwar architectures, transitional justice, and ideas of decolonial cultural expressions.
American University of Beirut
Dr. Sawsan Abdulrahim is an Associate Professor and Chair in the Department of Health Promotion and Community Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, at the American University of Beirut. She obtained her doctoral degree from the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Abdulrahim’s research focuses on social inequalities and health, the social and cultural meanings of subjective health evaluations, and the structural conditions that influence the wellbeing of labor migrants and refugees. Her previous work has focused on the social determinants of health of Arab immigrants in the United States and migrant domestic workers in the Arab region. Currently, she is undertaking research on the health of Syrian refugee women in Lebanon, with an emphasis on reproductive health outcomes and early marriage. She teaches courses in health promotion theory, forced migration and health, and global public health.
Zahraa Beydoun is a Researcher and a Project Coordinator at the Health Promotion and Community Health Department at the Faculty of Health Sciences at the American University of Beirut (AUB) in Lebanon and an instructor of Public Health at Phoenicia University in Lebanon. She is a graduate of the American University of Beirut where she obtained her BSc. in Nutrition and Dietetics and then her MPH in Health Promotion and Community Health. After her graduation Zahraa started working at UNRWA as part of her internship and then joined the American University of Beirut in 2013. In 2015 she joined Phoenicia University as an instructor of Public Health teaching courses in public health and population health for undergraduate students. Her areas of research interests are social inequalities in health and refugees’ health and rights. Her previous work has focused on the social determinants of health of the Lebanese population and refugees in Lebanon. Currently she is performing research on the social determinants of cardiovascular diseases among the Lebanese Population.