I am currently a Senior Researcher at Danube University Krems, where my research focuses on migration decision-making in contexts of displacement, migration governance, and diaspora politics with a geographical focus on the Middle East, North Africa and Europe. Previously, I was a postdoctoral researcher at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (2019-2021), a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Research Fellow at the Department of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam (2017-2019) and a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford (2016-2017).

I earned a joint PhD in Comparative Politics and Arabic Studies (summa cum laude) from Sciences Po Paris and Vienna University in 2016. My PhD research focused on Egyptian migrant activism in Paris and Vienna during and after the Arab Uprisings. My Marie Curie project SYRMAGINE analysed the ways in which Syrian refugees undertake and experience (im)mobility and why. It focused on migration decision-making processes of Syrian refugees settling in two of Syria’s neighbouring countries (Turkey and Lebanon) and examined how their imaginations of Europe affect their attitudes to seek asylum in European countries. As part of the Horizon2020 project MAGYC, I studied drivers of forced migration governance in North Africa, the Middle East and the Horn of Africa and the construction of crises discourse. My Elise Richter project SYREALITY investigates how broader life aspirations influence migration decision-making in a context of displacement and which influence war and displacement have on life aspirations and social class.