I am a doctoral candidate at the University of Texas at Dallas’s School of Economic, Political, and Policy Sciences (EPPS). My research interests revolve around the intersection of social resistance dynamics, autocratic behavior, and traditional and digital repression in political activism, with a regional focus on the Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) region. My passion for studying civil resistance dynamics was ignited by my involvement in the Tahrir Square protests, where I witnessed firsthand the power of collective action and non-violent resistance in effecting social change, sparking my fervent commitment to understanding the dynamics and complexities of civil resistance movements. 

Through my dissertation project, titled "Resistance Reimagined: Digital Tools, Physical Spaces, and the Evolution of State Repression in SWANA", I embark on a multifaceted exploration comprising three distinct papers that investigate the strategic interplay between civil resistance movements and state repression in the SWANA region, with particular attention to the evolving digital dimension of this contestation. Through a mixed-methods approach combining spatial analysis, comparative case studies, and digital trace data, I develop a comprehensive framework for understanding how authoritarian regimes calibrate their repressive responses across physical and digital domains. 

The first paper investigates how SWANA regimes strategically target digital spaces following periods of mass mobilization, with a particular focus on youth-oriented content. Utilizing an original dataset that combines blocked URLs with protest event data across 16 countries from 2016 to 2022, I find that institutional path dependence and regional learning better explain censorship patterns than immediate protest threats. Regimes that survived the Arab Spring exhibit significantly higher rates of youth-oriented digital repression. The second paper examines how foreign investments, particularly through China's Digital Silk Road initiative, have contributed to the development and expansion of digital authoritarianism in SWANA states. Through a comparative case study of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, I examine why states receiving similar DSR investments implement varying levels and forms of digital governance and repression. I argue that domestic institutional autonomy, state coercive capacity, and foreign investments contribute to this variation beyond technological capacity alone. To deepen this analysis, I conducted interviews with political elites, civil society members, academics, and technology experts to explore their perceptions of these investments and their implications for civil society resilience and digital autonomy across MENA countries. These qualitative insights illuminate how local actors interpret the strategic intent and sociopolitical consequences of digital infrastructure projects, revealing tensions between technological modernization and civic agency. The third paper examines the spatial dynamics of government repression against protests, investigating how proximity to key political and economic spaces affects protest-repression dynamics. Through geospatial analysis of protest events near government buildings, financial institutions, and transportation hubs, I demonstrate that protests are significantly more likely to occur within proximity to strategically important locations, revealing how spatial context shapes the interplay between dissent and state control. By bridging traditional protest politics literature with emerging scholarship on digital authoritarianism, this research advances our understanding of contentious politics in hybrid media environments. It offers insights into the resilience of both resistance movements and authoritarian regimes in the post-Arab Spring era. The findings have significant implications for both scholarly debates on state-society relations in authoritarian contexts and practical considerations for civil society organizations navigating increasingly sophisticated regimes of repression. 

Born and raised in Cairo, Egypt, I have long been passionate about understanding the political and social dynamics of political behavior and participation in the SWANA region. When I'm not immersed in academic pursuits and seminal works, you can often find me attempting to master the art of baking. My kitchen adventures have led to some interesting results, including a memorable incident where I mistook salt for sugar in a cake recipe. Needless to say, it was a learning experience that left me with a newfound appreciation for precision in both research and baking!