I am a PhD candidate in History and Middle Eastern Studies. I received my MD and MA in History from the American University of Beirut. My research sits at the intersection of late Ottoman history, the history of medicine, Arab intellectual history, and imperial and colonial studies, with a particular interest in knowledge production, modernity, colonialism, empire, migration, and gender in late Ottoman Syria and Palestine. My dissertation focuses on medical institutions in nineteenth-century Ottoman Syria, imperial rivalries, and the emergence of the modern physician class.

Research Project

My dissertation examines the transformation of medical institutions and the emergence of a professional physician class in the Eastern Mediterranean during the long nineteenth century, in the context of imperial rivalry, missionary institutions, state reform, and modernization. I explore how British, French, American, and Russian actors competed for influence through the establishment of dispensaries, hospitals, and medical schools across the region. My project situates the history of medicine in Syria within the broader Ottoman world, tracing how this competition expanded missionary, state, and local medical institutions, brought together a range of actors, and contributed to the emergence of a local modern medical elite. Beirut became particularly significant in this process, as it was home to two modern medical schools shaped by American-French missionary rivalry. Graduates of these missionary medical schools became important to both missionary and state efforts while actively negotiating their positions within these institutions. Through periodicals and physicians’ writings, I examine how local physicians negotiated their status and asserted their agency as part of an emerging modern medical intelligentsia.