Walaa is a teaching fellow in Gender, Sexuality and Conflict, LSE. Previously, she worked as an external collaborator at the European University Institute to the Libya Initiative Project. She received her PhD in Human Geography from Durham University in 2018. Her research examines the transformative political potential of everyday activism and aesthetics in the ambit of gender and sexuality, revealing their capacity to shape and re-make public imaginaries and decolonial political spaces.

In 2021, Walaa received a CBRL Fellowship for her project, 'Queer(y)ing Palestine’s Future', that builds on her ongoing research in relation to decolonial queering in Palestine. The project aims at exploring the role of gendered and sexualised practices characterising Palestinian politics of statehood futurity in the aftermath of the Oslo agreement.