I am an interdisciplinary scholar working at the intersection of language, religion, and gender, with a commitment to theorization and contextualization through ethnography. My current book examines how Ismaʿili women in Saudi Arabia creatively cultivate practices of concealment and dissimulation, commonly referred to by the Arabic term taqiyya. I explore how women employ linguistic and social practices to manage their visibility and belonging. The book also examines the central role women play in the community’s normative epistemology of secrecy, particularly in controlling the circulation of Ismaʿili texts and knowledge.

Alongside my work on concealment and dissimulation, I investigate how Ismaʿili Najrani speakers understand, describe, and use their regional Najrani variety, spoken in Najran City, the center of the Ismaʿili community in Saudi Arabia. My research examines how Najrani speakers from both urban and rural areas navigate and construct their social identities through linguistic choices and broader social practices. This work highlights the interplay between social and linguistic practices within the Ismaʿili community and addresses a critical gap in Arabic sociolinguistics and Modern South Arabian studies, fields in which the Najrani variety has been notably underexamined.