I work in the field of the Environmental Humanities, specifically questions on environmental justice. I like to work from the intersection of politics, history, visual culture and more recently, I have come to be interested in the field of finance. For example, I study some of the issues that relate to the environmental price that we pay for speculative finance in the world of real estate and large-scale urban construction. A central concern of my work is to see ecological issues in their complex conditions, to understand what informs socio-environments and how do they change over time? To tackle these problems, I do research, I teach and I write. I particularly love however to do research together with others and to write collaboratively. In addition to that, I enjoy bringing people of different approaches and viewpoints together by curating events and exhibitions as well as publishing edited volumes.

Since 2017, my research has been deeply concerned with our planet’s deserts. Drylands are not often seen as a space of significance. Instead, deserts are treated as empty, timeless or dead and hence, they have come to serve as a testing site for scientific exploration and presumed scientific advances. Arid regions across the globe morph into the backdrop of colonial and capitalist extraction and at the same time, they become dumping grounds in the toxic aftermath of our economic desires. I wrote my PhD dissertation at Goldsmiths, University of London, on this subject. In the research, I worked my way through the interplay colonial science and colonial bureaucracies and the more contemporary extractivist capital production that is taking place in arid regions in the case of Egypt. The dissertation looks at a number of desert programmes in Egypt, specifically at land reclamation and corporate desert agriculture, the planning and construction of new desert cities (including Egypt’s New Administrative Capital) as well as the mining of gold. The PhD was supervised by Dr. David L. Martin in Politics and International Relations at Goldsmiths, University of London and it was examined in June 2024 by Prof. Harriet Hawkins (Royal Holloway, University of London) and Prof. Laleh Khalili (University of Exeter).

Currently, Dr. Dalia Wahdan (American University in Cairo) and I are working on a research together that looks at land sales and speculation of Egypt’s Mediterranean coast.

In 2018, Saba Zavarei and I founded the research lab and publishing platform Konesh. In Konesh we come together with others to discuss different ideas and approaches towards the politics of space. So far, we have published two edited volumes - under the subjects “Scale” and “Trace” - and we have curated two multi-media exhibitions and events on those themes - one in London and one in Cairo.

I have been supporting the work of different research and action collectives such as Network of Urban Studies in Egypt, the CHASE Climate Justice Network and the Post-Matterialisms reading group.