My main research interest is in the postcolonial Arab world. My first monograph focused particularly on gender representation in this context. I am currently writing a monograph entitled Postcolonial Thought: Arab Literary and Theoretical Contexts and have co-edited Islamism and Cultural Expression in the Arab World (in press), which grows out of a collaborative AHRC/ESRC-funded project. I have further interests on connections between Arab and South Asian women’s writing. I have supervisory and teaching interests in Arab and South Asian fiction and in postcolonial studies more broadly.

I am interested in supervising high quality projects on Arab and South Asian literatures in English, French or translation, particularly under the umbrella of postcolonial or world literature studies. I am particularly keen to receive PhD proposals on (any kind of) Palestinian writing. 

2014-15: ENGL 308 Contemporary Literature and ENGL 421 (MA) Postcolonial Women's Writing.

I have also taught on: ENGL 201: Theory and Practice of Criticism; ENGL 302: Women's Writing; ENGL 352: African Literature; ENGL 369 Twentieth-Century Indian Novel in English; ENGL 304 American Literature from 1900.

My primary research area is creative work - particularly literature - from the Middle East (mostly the Arab world, including North Africa). I'm also very interested in the relationship between the Arab world and postcolonial studies: I'm currently working on a monograph entitled Postcolonial Thought and the Arab World: Literary and Theoretical Contexts, contracted to Routledge, which will have chapters on Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon and Palestine. Islamism and Cultural Expression in the Arab World, co-edited with Abir Hamdar, is in press (Routledge, 2015). My first book, Arab, Muslim, Woman: Voice and Vision in Postcolonial Literature and Film (Routledge, 2008) is an interdisciplinary examination of a range of Arab women's postcolonial fiction, autobiography, film and other visual media. My chapter on Zineb Sedira in Contemporary Art in the Middle East, ed. Paul Sloman (London: Black Dog Press, 2009), was positively reviewed in the Guardian Review in October 2009. Some of my first published articles were on Iranian cinema. 

My secondary research area is South Asian (particularly Indian and Pakistani) and South Asian diaspora literature, with a particular emphasis on connections between South Asia and the Arab world in women's writing. A chapter on these connections can be found in eds. Claire Chambers and Caroline Herbert, Imagining Muslims in South Asia and the Diaspora (Routledge, 2014).

I have wider interests in postcolonial and diaspora literatures. I edited a symposium on 'Glocal Diasporas' for the Journal of Commonwealth Literature (2010) and a special issue of Postcolonial Text (2011) entitled 'Glocal Imaginaries'. I have also published on expatriate American writer Paul Bowles and his collaborations with Moroccan storytellers and writers. 

I was the Principal Investigator of the AHRC-funded project 'Islamism in Arab Fiction and Film, 1947 to the Present' (with Dr Arthur Bradley and Dr Abir Hamdar), Feb. 2009 - Feb. 2010. Please see our website at http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/projects/islamism/index.htm. The major output of this project is Islamism and Cultural Expression in the Arab World (see above).

I am on the steering group of the Centre for Transcultural Writing and Research and a co-organiser of Trans-Scriptions, a series that brings together creative writers, publishers and academics to discuss interfaces between 'Writing, Culture and Location'. Please see www.transculturalwriting.com