The Middle East Studies Graduate Student Association (MESGSA) is an interdisciplinary group united by a shared scholarly interest in the Middle East and North Africa. Combining diverse humanities and social sciences backgrounds with regional expertise, the association aims to foster conversations among graduate students that are theoretically diverse and regionally focused.

The association offers opportunities for funding of paper workshops and reading groups, panels on fieldwork in the Middle East led by graduate students with experience conducting dissertation work across the Middle East and North Africa, and research travel. These gatherings serve to support and foster critical and engaged Brown student scholarship in the Middle East at the graduate level.

Affiliation Registration Form

Middle East Studies Graduate Student Association (MESGSA) Leader

Mairéad Smith is a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at Brown University. She holds a B.A. in sociology and philosophy from Trinity College Dublin and an M.A. in Middle East studies from Lund University. Her research examines responses to violence categorized as “conflict-related sexual violence,” focusing on how language, translation, and semiotics shape its aftermath. Centered in post-conflict Nineveh, Iraq, her work interrogates how the category of “rape” is translated and universalized—especially where no direct linguistic equivalent exists—and how language ideologies influence women’s ability to speak about sexual violence in state, humanitarian, and legal encounters.