I am a historian with teaching and research interests focused on connective histories of media, music, sound, and popular culture across modern South & Central Asia, and the Middle East. 

In June of 2021, I received my Ph.D. in History from Stanford University. I am currently an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) 2024-2025 Fellow. From 2021 to July of 2024, I served as a Lecturer and Teaching Fellow in the Civic, Liberal, and Global Education (COLLEGE) Program, also at Stanford University. I will be joining Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of History as an assistant professor in August 2025. My work incorporates questions regarding technology and citizenship, transnationalism and the fluidity of identity, gender and performance, and critical approaches to global history, decolonization, postcolonial studies, and sensory history. I am currently working on my first monograph tentatively titled The Sounds of Kabul: Radio & the Politics of Popular Culture in Modern Afghanistan, 1960-79. My doctoral dissertation, on which this book is based, was the recipient of the 2023 World History Association Dissertation Prize for the best dissertation in world, global, or transnational history.

Having earned previous degrees in Architecture (B.A.) and City Planning (M.C.P) from the University of California at Berkeley, the foundation of my scholarship is built upon a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary perspective. My study of the past is informed through the study of sounds broadcast in and beyond the built environment. 

As a scholar and educator, and refugee and immigrant, I am committed to advancing a culture of equity and inclusion within academia through my activism and advocacy for diversity as well as my teaching and scholarship focused on the study of history through the experiences of marginalized peoples, places, and cultures.