I am a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford's King Center on Global Development. I hold a PhD in Politics from the University of Oxford. I visited Yale during my PhD and before Oxford, I studied at Mannheim focusing on Advanced Quantitative Methods in Political Science.
My research focuses on topics related to the Political Economy, Development, and Historical Political Economy, with a focus on identity and inequality.
My methodological expertise lies in the field of Computational Social Sciences. I employ and advance methods of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Computational Text Analysis in a multilingual setting, working with a variety of Western and Arabic languages.
My work incorporates retrieval and digitalization of historical maps, textual data, and several other sources of archival data.
I am passionate about using my computational skills to generate new sources of quantitative data that reveal valuable information that would be otherwise lost in the archives.
My research has been published or is forthcoming at the Journal of Politics, Perspectives on Politics, and Journal of Peace Research.
I am a former professional swimmer for the Egyptian Swimming National Team, for which I competed professionally for several years. I still find myself thinking more clearly while doing all those endless laps at the pool. I enjoy reading about Islamic Art and Architecture.
Photo Credits: Rod Searcey
DPhil (PhD) in Politics, 2023
University of Oxford
Visiting Doctoral Student, 2022
Yale University
MA in Political Science (Advanced Quantitative Methods), 2018
University of Mannheim
BA in Political Science and Psychology, 2016
University of Mannheim
Visiting Undergraduate Student, 2015
Trinity College Dublin
I undertook the following further academic training:
I work on the political economy of development focusing on the role of religion, culture, and identity on inequality and public service provision. I employ computational methods of text analysis and GIS to quantify archival data and bring it to life 💥!
watch the GIF above, for an overlay of historical maps of Alexandria in the 19th century on current geographical coordinates. Part of my project mapping the economic history of inequality
Below an overview of some of my ongoing projects: