2024-25 Graduate Student Research Fellow
About
Israa Khalifa is a PhD student in the University of Michigan's Anthropology and History program. Her dissertation research focuses on the science of genetics and genomics in the modern Middle East. She examines the relationship between social differences and scientific knowledge production and their intersection with religion and law. Additionally, Israa has been researching the Ahmed Zaki Abu Shadi collection at U-M’s Joseph A. Labadie Collection and the NYU Abu Dhabi collection to discuss themes related to nationalism and technoscience in early twentieth-century Egypt.
As an Eisenberg Institute fellow, Khalifa will draw on preliminary fieldwork, as well as research in British, Dutch, and UAE archives, to prepare her dissertation prospectus. She will also continue working on Abu Shadi’s papers to explore themes related to home and exile.
