I am Associate Professor in Arabic and Comparative Literature and Director of the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies.

I wrote my PhD thesis on experimentation and intertextuality in modern Arabic literature at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS, 2002-2006) before taking up a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship (also at SOAS, 2007-2010) and joined the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, in September 2010.

My research interests are Arabic and Arab Anglophone writing, comparative literature, religion & literature, translation studies and ecocriticism. My recent book, Religion in the Egyptian Novel: Themes and Approaches was published by Edinburgh University Press in July 2019. I am currently working on a new monograph on Literature and Environment in Israel/Palestine. I have also published a number of translations from Arabic, including Nobel Prize for Literature Winner Naguib Mahfouz's Morning and Evening Talk, Mohamed Berrada's Like A Summer Never to be Repeated and Samuel Shimon's Iraqi in Paris.

I teach UG and PG modules on literature and film in Israel/Palestine, literary translation, Middle Eastern and postcolonial literature, and advanced Arabic language.

I supervise PhD students working on literature and film in the Middle East, Arab-Anglophone literature, Arabic literary and cultural translation studies, and postcolonial literary studies more generally.