Zeina Zaatari, Ph.D., is the Director of the Arab American Cultural Center, adjunct faculty in Anthropology, and Faculty Fellow in the Honors College at the University of Illinois at Chicago. For over 25 years, she has worked on gender and racial justice in Arab and Arab American communities both within academic and non-profit spaces in programming and producing knowledge. Prior to joining UIC in January 2019, she worked as Research Director at Political Research Associate, a social justice think tank. Previously, Zeina worked as MENA Program Director at the Global Fund for Women (2004-2012) where she managed a diverse grantmaking program to support women's and trans movements in the Middle East and North Africa. Her research focuses on feminist and queer movements in the MENA region with a specific focus on Lebanon and on subjectivity, activism, heteronormativity.
Her recent publications include two co-edited books: Routledge Handbook on Women of the Middle East co-edited with Suad Joseph (2023) and The Politics of Engaged Gender Research in the Arab Region: Feminist Fieldwork and Knowledge Production co-edited with Suad Joseph and Lena Meari (2022). Among her other publications include: a book chapter titled “Sexual Rights Movement(s): Problematics of Visibility” in Sexualities in the Middle East and North Africa: Contemporary Issues and Challenges, edited by J. Michael Ryan and Helen Rizzo (2024, Syracuse University Press), "Sarah Hegazy and the Struggle for Freedom,"Middle East Report Online (2020), “Social Movements and Revolution” in A Companion to the Anthropology of the Middle East (2015), and “Desirable Masculinity/Femininity and Nostalgia of the “Anti-Modernity”: Bab el-Hara Television Series as a Site of Production” in Sexuality and Culture (2014). She is an Associate Editor for the Middle East and Africa for the Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures, president-elect of the Association for Middle East Women's Studies 2024-2025, and co-chair of the MENA/SWANA Caucus for NCORE (The National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education), and a co-founder and elected board member of Women Human Rights Defenders-MENA Coalition
