My work has always been shaped by movement.

I grew up with swimming as a central part of my life, learning early about discipline, resilience, rhythm and the relationship between effort and performance. Movement has therefore always shaped me, whether through sport or through the many forms of movement that have marked my own life. I am myself a product of migration and of different cultures, with roots stretching from the Mashreq to the Maghreb, and from the northern to the southern shores of the Mediterranean.

These experiences have influenced both the questions I ask and the way I work. I have long been interested in how people navigate change and different systems, and in how the environments and institutions around us shape what we become and what we wish to be.

I am a researcher and strategic advisor working across migration, livelihoods, employment, entrepreneurship, gender and institutional transformation. Over the past decade, I have worked across the Middle East, North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa with governments, international organisations, development partners, research institutions, NGOs, and private-sector actors.

My work sits at the intersection of research and action: making sense of complexities, identifying changes and what needs to change, and helping translate ideas into visions, strategies and programmes. I hold a PhD in Political Science from Sciences Po Paris, where I researched the entrepreneurial trajectories of Syrian refugees in Jordan and Egypt. I also teach as an Adjunct Professor at the American University in Cairo, where I teach my own course on Migration Policies.

Movement is not only what I work on; it is also the way I develop myself and my own thinking. Through swimming, I ground myself to move with purpose. I also explore the role of sport in creating resilience and opportunity, particularly for people whose lives have been shaped by displacement or difficult circumstances, notably through my involvement with the Yusra Mardini Foundation and Swim for Good.

Embodied practice through yoga has opened another dimension of this exploration. It has made me increasingly interested in the relationship between the body and the mind, which I already explore through social science, particularly through questions of social capital, and the changes in beliefs, values and norms that can accompany migration. Here, I explore the role of awareness and conscious thinking in how we work, relate to others, and navigate change, through the philosophy of yoga, and how we can draw on it to become better towards ourselves, as well as towards the communities and environments that surround us.

I am also a mother and a feminist. These are not separate from the questions I work on. They grew in importance as I advanced in my career and professional development. As such, I’m particularly interested in gender, agency, power and the social structures and dynamics that shape our professional and personal lives, including the often invisible conditions that determine who has access to movement in life, whether through participating in and/or leading the lives we want.

These interests may appear to span very different worlds: migration and swimming, institutional transformation and embodied practice, feminism and land, research, and everyday life. For me, they are connected by a common interest in movement and transformation.

This website brings these different threads together: my professional work, research and writing, my relationship with movement, and sport, and an evolving exploration of embodiment, space and transformation.

At the heart of it all is a continuing interest in how people, organisations, and societies move, evolve and transform, and what makes meaningful transformation possible.