Global and International Studies Building, 3052
Mariam Taher is an anthropologist of Southwest Asia and North Africa (also known as the Middle East and North Africa region) who researches how security produces insecurity. Her ethnographic research has explored everyday experiences of security and insecurity in contexts of militarization, minoritization, and borderlands, demonstrating how projects of security can generate new forms of vulnerability for marginalized communities. Her current book project, In the Shadow of the Border: Gendered Mobilities in Siwa, Egypt, examines the securitization of Egypt’s Siwa Oasis and its surroundings, showing how “security” extends beyond checkpoints and surveillance to encompass everyday life, agricultural planning, resource extraction, and tourism management.
Dr. Taher is an Assistant Professor at the Department for Middle East Languages and Cultures (MELC) in the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies at Indiana University Bloomington. She earned her PhD in Anthropology & Middle East and North African Studies at Northwestern University and was previously a Qatar Postdoctoral Fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. She also holds an MA in Middle Eastern Studies from Leiden University (NL) and an MA in international relations from the University of St Andrews (Scotland).
Courses Recently Taught:
– US Foreign Policy and the Muslim World
– In/Security in the Middle East and North Africa
– Racial and Ethnic Minorities in the Middle East and North Africa