NARRATIVE INTRODUCTION

I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Religion and an affiliate faculty member in the School of Natural Resources and the Environment. My core responsibilities involve teaching undergraduate and graduate classes. Over the last ten years my research has taken me all over the world: MENA region, South Asian subcontinent, and Western Europe, where I have worked with local organizations and government stakeholders on issues pertaining to women, sustainability, and leadership and professional development. My research has facilitated study-abroad opportunities in India and in France, where my students learned through experiential learning and case studies the impact of globalization and migration on women’s lives.

In addition to my teaching, I served as the Graduate Coordinator in the Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research for five years (2011-2016), an administrative duty in which I oversaw an overhaul of the graduate certificate program in gender and international development. I also served for seven years (2007-2013) as the Faculty-in-Residence for the Global-Living Learning Community for Broward and Yulee halls at the University of Florida. The Broward/Yulee area dormitories comprise the largest on-campus residence-life community on the UF campus—which at the time housed over 1000 undergraduate students. All of these administrative and service responsibilities have provided me with extensive experience in creating and directing academic and student-life programs, supervising students and personnel, and managing community-based initiatives involving students.

I also supervise graduate students in the areas of gender and transnational politics, interdisciplinary ecology, post-colonial theory and literature, sustainable agriculture, non-governmental organizations and social capacity, and business leadership.

My training in the modern languages of Hindi and Urdu has allowed me to fully engage in the culture of the South Asian Subcontinent: I have published translations of Hindi and Urdu literature as well as scholarly articles on colonial and nationalist language politics. My more recent research builds on this knowledge by tracing the uneven effects of globalization and international development on women’s lives in emerging markets, particularly in India.

My research, teaching, and service duties have always focused on creating dialogues between different stakeholders and finding a way to bring people together in spite of social and political exigencies that seemed to make it impossible for constructive partnerships.