Asmaa Meftah
Postgraduate Researcher
Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies
About me:
Dr Asmaa Meftah is a scholar of Modern Arabic Studies specialising in postcolonial ecocriticism, environmental humanities, and modern Arabic literature. She completed her PhD in Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter’s Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies in 2026.
Her doctoral research, titled “Eco-Otherness and Interconnectedness: Re-thinking Land, Trees, and Nonhuman Agency in Palestinian and North African Literature,” examines the relationships between literature, colonialism, environmental dispossession, and the more-than-human world. Her research brings postcolonial theory into dialogue with ecocriticism to explore how land, trees, animals, and other nonhuman entities function as agents of memory, resistance, belonging, and ecological continuity.
My research interests include resistance literature, postcolonial and decolonial theory, ecocriticism and the environmental humanities, ecofeminism, and the relationship between culture and nature. I am particularly interested in literary representations of land, place, displacement, environmental dispossession, ecological memory, and more-than-human agency.
More broadly, my work examines the interconnectedness of human and nonhuman worlds and the ways literature registers relationships among environmental transformation, colonialism, memory, identity, and resistance. I am especially interested in how plants, animals, landscapes, water, and other more-than-human entities participate in cultural memory and provide alternative ways of narrating histories of dispossession, survival, and ecological continuity.
Alongside her literary research, Asmaa is the founder and developer of Meftah Script, a digital humanities platform designed to support academic transliteration and the study of Arabic and other languages.
Research Supervisory team:
Professor Christina Phillips Senior Lecturer in Arabic Literature and Media (IAIS Department )
Dr Nadeen Dakkak Lecturer in World and Postcolonial Literatures (English Department )
Dr Chris Campbell Lecturer in Global Literatures (English Department )
Education:
PhD in Arab and Islamic Studies University of Exeter 2026
Diploma in Academic English and Research Skills Canterbury Christ Church University
24 October 2016 to 31 March 2017
Master degree: British and American Literature and Civilization Dr. Moulay Tahar, Saida– Algeria
September 2014 to July 2016
Bachelor of Arts: English language, Literature and Civilization Dr. Moulay Tahar, Saida– Algeria
September 2011 to June 2014