Laure Assaf

Laure Assaf is an anthropologist and a specialist in Middle Eastern studies. Her research interests focus on youth, urbanity, migration, and temporality in the contemporary Emirati society and the broader Gulf region. She was trained in anthropology at Paris Nanterre University (Master's, PhD) and in Arabic at the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations (INALCO) in Paris. She is also an Associate Researcher at the French Research Centre of the Arabian Peninsula (CEFREPA) in Kuwait. Assaf's research has notably been published in the scholarly journals City; Population, Space and Place; and Arabian Humanities. She is currently working on a book project entitled Arab Youth of Abu Dhabi. Becoming a Subject in the Global City, an ethnography of the everyday experiences of young, middle-class Emiratis and Arab expatriates coming of age in the first decades of the 21st century. The book explores the importance of place in shaping contemporary subjects, through the notion of citadinité (urban membership) and its potential to form a counterpoint to national belonging. Assaf’s recent works analyze the evolution of social and moral norms in the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula through the lens of popular culture and urban lifestyles. She has also embarked on a longer research project addressing the experiences of time in the region, in particular official representations of the future. She is the editor, with Deepak Unnikrishnan, of literary magazine Wasafiri 122 “The UAE Issue.”