Rawda started her LSE-funded PhD at the Department of Gender Studies in 2024. Her research examines gender, sexuality, and religion as travelling concepts and how their travels may transform, shift, or otherwise reproduce established epistemological paradigms in relation to the community of Egyptian exiles in London. Rawda investigates Egyptian exiles' interpersonal and communal relationships as spaces of knowledge production in order to understand how exiles negotiate these conceptual meanings between home and exile. The project aims to open up new possibilities for re-conceptualising gender, sexuality, and religion in the region through these conceptual travels that complicate local/global, western/eastern, and imperialist/culturally authentic dichotomies that dictate debates on gender and sexuality in the Middle East. 

Rawda holds an MA in Gender, Politics, and International Relations from University College Dublin, and she also studied Critical Gender Studies at Central European University. She situates herself between research and practice, having worked as a human rights researcher and advocate at civil society organizations focusing on gender-based violence, political prisoners, and criminal justice in the region and beyond.  

Supervisory Team: Dr Clare Hemmings and Dr Hakan Sandal-Wilson