Sumayya Kassamali

Sumayya Kassamali holds a PhD in Anthropology from Columbia University (2017), where her dissertation focused on the lifeworlds of migrant workers in contemporary Lebanon. Her book project, tentatively titled Black Beirut, examines an informal labor sector where African and Asian domestic workers and Syrian refugees have come together to transform the city in recent years. The work discovers a Beirut where inhabitants excluded from political citizenship have built a set of religious and commercial establishments, informal services, community rituals, internal codes, ways of speaking Arabic, and underground spaces for leisure, consumption, and desire. Her larger research asks how belonging is forged under conditions of structural exclusion, and she is additionally interested in the politics of post-9/11 America, the War of Terror, and the cultures of the contemporary Middle East.