Historian Researcher | Artist filmmaker | Cultural Worker | Virtual and Augmented Reality Developper
Treasures grow richer when shared. Whenever possible, I will put my archives, references, and work available online.
I was born in Qatar, and spent my childhood in resiliant Beirut and came of age was in Tiohtiá:ke | Mooniyang’s (Montreal) horizons. From university onwards , my path continued between Beirut and Paris’ razor-sharp design world shaped by formative years under Alexandria’s engraved warmth, Istanbul’s layered histories, Tourcoing’s northern light and Cannes’ shimmering contradictions.
Trained as a researcher — with a Master’s in History/International Relations and a Diplôme d’Études Approfondies in Political Sciences from Saint-Joseph University (USJ-Beirut) — I spent over a decade bridging academia and cultural practice across international university environments (USJ and American University of Paris AUP).
Working as a documentalist, research associate, and educational technology specialist, I honed my ability to connect research communities, organize interdisciplinary conferences and workshops, and merge technical expertise with pedagogical innovation.
My early work focuses concentrated on 19th century Arab intellectuals, the sociology of secret and esoteric societies, and socio-cultural transformations driven by information and communication technologies in the modern Arab world.
As an early adopter of digital technologies, I built in parallel subject-specific archival databases to preserve marginalized narratives. I collaborated with Beirut’s artistic vanguard — Arab Image Foundation, Ashkal Alwan, Nadi Lekol Nas — always threading the needle between institutional knowledge and prefigurative cultural practice.
But archives alone couldn’t hold the questions I carried. At Le Fresnoy — France’s National Studio for Contemporary Arts —, I began translating research into film – a practice that expanded over the next decade into eight short and medium length films, five multidisciplinary artworks: photo series, immersive installations, and robotic sculptures… These works have been exhibited worldwide from Dubai Art Fair, Dubai Film Festival, Centre Pompidou, MAXXI Rome, and Cannes Film Festival, to name a few. Here is where history and my storytelling converged in material experimentation: from tactile (stop-motion, analog film) to digital (VFX, fulldome), and sonic (soundtracks, musical voyages) to archival (photographic archives, lost and found old music, globally-sourced robotic sculpture).
A turning point came in 2017: five months working as a cultural mediator with Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders — MSF) on Mediterranean refugee search and rescue emergency missions birthed What Happens to a Displaced Ant, an epistolary docu-fiction shot with a smartphone. Then came, 2019, when Lebanon’s revolution, economic collapse, and port explosion rewrote the rules. I then joined Workers of Art and Culture, a group born from the revolution that worked to create alternative models for cultural production — reimagining syndicates, cooperative approaches, and sustainable frameworks for film and artistic labor.
Now based in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal, I am pursuing a PhD at NAD-UQAC, exploring a decolonial approach to museums through immersive storytelling. With the Mimesis Lab and Hexagram (a network of research-creation in arts, culture and technologies), I develop strategies for immersive digital archives that challenge colonial narratives.
Beyond academia, I co-founded SAWA a Collective of hree Lebanese women working to bring Global South communities together through arts, culture, and collective action.
In short, this is my practice:
Storytelling as guardianship (past)
Cultural work as solidarity (present)
Prefiguration as blueprint (future)
I build temporary models — cooperatives, syndicates, fugitive archives — where the process is the policy. The goal? To prove another world is possible, one project at a time.
