I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Texas at Dallas’s School of Economic, Political, and Policy Sciences (EPPS). I earned my PhD in Political Science and my MS in Social Data Analytics from UT Dallas. 

My research examines the intersection of social resistance dynamics, autocratic behavior, and traditional and digital repression, with a regional focus on the Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) region. My passion for studying civil resistance dynamics was ignited by my experiences during the Tahrir Square protests, where I witnessed firsthand the power of collective action and non-violent resistance to effect social change, sparking my commitment to understanding the dynamics and complexities of civil resistance movements. 

My dissertation, "The Architecture of Repression: Digital Governance, Institutional Variation, and the Spatial Dynamics of Contention in the MENA," investigates the strategic interplay between civil resistance movements and state repression across digital and physical domains. Through three papers, I examine how regimes deploy digital censorship in the wake of mass mobilization, how foreign surveillance technology investments shape digital authoritarianism, and how physical space structures protest-repression dynamics.

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In my free time, I can usually be found testing my way through every caramel iced coffee within a 10‑mile radius or experimenting in the kitchen. Both pursuits keep me curious, caffeinated, and occasionally humbled.