About

I am a writer, researcher, educator, and translator from Bahrain. I hold a PhD in Philosophy from Stony Brook University, in addition to an MA in Philosophy from Duquesne University and a BSc in Computer Science from the University of Bahrain, my country of origin. Whenever I’m not working on philosophy, I like to write and read poetry, practice playing the oud, and train in boxing. I am a practicing facilitator of Philosophy for Children (P4C) and Community of Inquiry (COI) at the Baseera Institute, Jedda. My writings, both academic and creative (poetry and fiction), have been published in several English and Arabic imprints (see CV). I currently teach Critical Thinking at the Bahrain Institute of Banking and Finance (BIBF).

In terms of scholarship, I am currently working on putting together an edited volume for Middle Eastern Literatures, comprising some of the papers presented in the two panels I have co-organized at the Middle East Studies Association conferences in 2019 and 2020. I have recently also completed a number of articles on the philosophy of imagination, modern Arabic poetics, philosophical pedagogy, philosophy for children, and Arabic horror literature for a number of publications, aside from upcoming translations covering poetry, international politics, and P4C (see Writings and Recent Work).

My original training in philosophy was in German Idealism. My doctoral research focused on the German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel, with a dissertation entitled Thinking Counterintuitively: The Beginning of Philosophical Cognition in Light of Hegel’s 1807 Critique of Construction. In 2013-2014, I was a Visiting Research Fellow at Universität Trier in Trier, Germany. I’m also a proud recipient of the Fulbright Scholarship (2008). Currently, my philosophical interests lie in extending the speculative argument of my dissertation into the fields of aesthetics and political philosophy. I’m particularly interested in how Hegel and his romantic/idealist cohort’s insights on the nature of cognition and imagination reflect on the cultural and political history of the Middle East, especially in relation to modern Arabic poetics. In terms of pedagogy, I am passionately involved in bringing the insights and practices of P4C/COI into the Arabic classroom, whether in Bahrain or beyond.