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The Intellectual Ecology Behind My Work
Every researcher inherits ways of thinking before contributing their own. My work has been shaped not by a single discipline or intellectual tradition, but by an ongoing dialogue between anthropology, discourse analysis, narrative inquiry, critical theory, medical humanities, literature, photography, and public scholarship. Some influences taught me how to investigate language; others shaped what I notice; others grounded my work in lived realities or challenged me to think more critically about power, identity, and culture. Together, they form the intellectual ecology from which my own research has emerged.
I. Formative Mentors
The people who cultivated my early curiosityLong before beginning doctoral research, I was fortunate to encounter scholars who took my curiosity seriously and encouraged me to pursue questions that lay beyond the classroom. Looking back, I recognise these conversations as foundational to the way I still approach research today.
Dr Abdulla Yateem
A Bahraini anthropologist and ethnographer whose scholarship spans historical anthropology, Gulf societies and cultures, Bedouin communities, French anthropological thought, and the social history of Bahrain, with appointments at Derasat and the University of Bahrain. During my early years writing essays for Al Bahrain Al Thaqafiya (Bahrain Cultural Magazine), I frequently visited him in his office; conversations about individual articles gradually became informal tutorials in ethnographic thinking. He encouraged me to look beyond events to the cultures that produced them, and to take everyday life seriously as an object of inquiry — habits of observation that became central to my research long before I encountered narrative inquiry or discourse analysis formally.
Dr Sawsan Karimi
A social anthropologist and Associate Professor at the University of Bahrain, educated at SOAS, whose doctoral work on dress and identity examined the relationship between social change and contemporary Bahraini identities. Although she was never my lecturer, I regularly attended the seminars she organised, and she became an important mentor, introducing me to scholarship on women, religion, culture, and society. Through her guidance I began to understand that everyday experiences are never merely personal but shaped by broader historical and political processes — a thread running through much of what I study today.
Husain Almahroos
A Bahraini writer and photographer whose influence reached me through two routes at once. I translated a body of his written work — among them Maryam: The Narrative of Henna and Women with Lost Names and Princess Sabeeka Park, part of the Bahrain Visual Memory series — which meant sitting inside his sentences closely enough to feel their rhythm before I ever thought formally about discourse. Alongside that, he took me on a number of field photography trips, where he taught me to perfect my framing and to think in depth of field — but what he really taught me was how to notice the everyday and the ordinary in the first place. That habit of noticing turned out to be the same one my research depends on; I only recognised the connection later. More of this translation work →
II. Methodological Foundations
The scholars who taught me how to study languageMichael Bamberg
His three-level positioning framework — within the story world, within interaction, and in relation to wider cultural narratives — provides the analytical architecture through which I investigate identity across much of my work, allowing me to move systematically between individual stories and broader social processes.
Alexandra Georgakopoulou
Her work on small stories fundamentally shaped my understanding of narrative — the argument that identity is constructed through fragmentary, everyday tellings as much as through complete life stories made it possible to treat digital blogs as legitimate sites of identity work. My own methodological development, adapting small stories to asynchronous online writing, builds directly on this foundation.
Rom Harré & Luk van Langenhove
Their work provided the conceptual foundations of positioning as a dynamic discursive process, giving theoretical precision to a term I use across multiple studies.
III. Critical Foundations
The theories that deepen interpretationJudith Butler
Her theory of performativity lets me approach categories such as womanhood, motherhood, and religious identity as ongoing social accomplishments rather than static characteristics — identities continually enacted rather than fixed.
Norman Fairclough
Critical Discourse Studies encourages me to ask not only how language functions, but whose interests particular discourses serve, how power is reproduced, and how social structures become naturalised through everyday communication.
James Paul Gee
His distinction between everyday discourse and broader Discourses offers a bridge between close linguistic analysis and wider social critique, letting local language choices be read within larger ideological and institutional frameworks.
IV. Empirical Foundations
The scholars who grounded my work in lived realitiesMarcia Inhorn
Her ethnographic research on infertility in Muslim and Middle Eastern societies is the empirical foundation much of my own work is built on, demonstrating that experiences often read as individual are deeply embedded in wider cultural, religious, and social structures.
Arthur Greil
His sociological understanding of infertility as a socially negotiated experience reinforces my commitment to treating infertility not simply as a medical condition but as a lived social identity, shaped through relationships, institutions, and cultural expectations.
Marcia Inhorn & Frank van Balen
Their comparative work situates infertility within a global context, letting Muslim women's experiences be understood comparatively rather than as isolated cultural cases.
Professor Lisa McEntee-Atalianis
Beyond supervising my doctoral research and becoming a valued collaborator, her scholarship on communities of practice significantly shaped my understanding of online infertility blogging communities as linguistic and social spaces where belonging, expertise, and identity are negotiated collectively.
V. Literary & Humanistic Influences
Writers who shaped the way I observeSome writers have influenced my work not by providing theory, but by cultivating attentiveness.
Elif Shafak
Her ability to uncover histories, cultures, and identities through the smallest details of ordinary lives continually reminds me that careful observation often reveals more than grand narratives.
Khaled Hosseini
His writing demonstrates how intimate human relationships can illuminate broader historical and political realities without losing sight of individual dignity.
Gabriel García Márquez
His work reinforces my conviction that the ordinary contains extraordinary meaning, and that memory, atmosphere, and place are themselves forms of knowledge.
VI. Philosophical Influences
Sayyid Kamal Al-Haidari
His commitment to critical inquiry, historical analysis, and intellectual independence has profoundly shaped my understanding of scholarship as a continual process of questioning inherited assumptions — a reminder that intellectual integrity requires both deep respect for tradition and the courage to examine it critically.
VII. Beyond Academia
Ways of seeing that shaped my scholarshipNot all influences entered my life through academic texts.
Photography
Long before photography became part of this website, it taught me to slow down. Looking through a camera cultivated patience, attention to overlooked details, and sensitivity to context — habits that later became methodological principles in my research. See Seeing →
Arabic Essays
Years before my doctoral work, I found myself writing reflections on memory, authority, belonging, identity, and everyday life. Looking back, many of those questions would later reappear — more systematically and theoretically — in my academic research. See Writing →
Teaching
Teaching has continually reminded me that understanding is measured not by complexity alone but by whether difficult ideas become meaningful to others. It has shaped not only how I communicate knowledge, but how I think about scholarship itself.
VIII. My Contribution
Every scholar inherits intellectual traditions; scholarship advances by entering into conversation with them rather than beginning from nowhere. My own work has gradually developed at the intersection of ethnographic attentiveness, positioning theory, small stories, critical discourse studies, and medical humanities. Across different research contexts — from infertility and healthcare communication to religion, digital narratives, and emerging human–AI interaction — I seek to understand how people use language to negotiate identity, belonging, and care under conditions of social, cultural, and institutional pressure.
Increasingly, my aim is not only to interpret these experiences but also to translate research into practical resources that improve communication in healthcare, education, and public life.
Scholarship is sustained by conversations across generations. This page is both an acknowledgement of those conversations and an expression of gratitude to the people, traditions, and disciplines that have shaped the questions I continue to ask.