By training I am a historian of the early and middle periods of the Middle East. My Ph.D. is from the University of California Santa Barbara, and my M.A. from the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London. Areas of emphasis in my education included the formative period of Islam, Egypt's Fatimid and Mamluk Empires, and gender in Islamic history. I have also studied Arabic at the American University in Cairo, the King Fahd Advanced School of Translation in Tangier, Morocco, Middlebury College, the University of Utah, and Brigham Young University.

I specialize in the urban history of Egypt in the premodern period. My dissertation was a microhistory of a neighborhood in Cairo, al-Darb al-Ahmar, from 1450-1600. Research on a single neighborhood revealed new insights into women’s roles as property owners, the interactions of Christians and Muslims at the local level, domestic architecture, and the structure of the city in terms of gates, neighborhoods and streets. This project has spurred my interest in the production of legal documents I used to understand the neighborhood. I now want to learn how the Islamic courts of Egypt changed and stayed the same after the Ottoman conquest of the Mamluk empire (1517 C.E.). I am a social historian particularly interested in using material culture to understand the past, including among other possibilities architecture, means of transportation, consumption, and manufacturing.

Teaching and Courses Taught: