Mona Khneisser

Mona Khneisser is a PhD student in Sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests include social movements, critical development studies, infrastructure, and political economy, focusing on Lebanon and the Arab region more broadly. She graduated with an MA in Sociology from the American University of Beirut (AUB), Lebanon, and has previously worked as an Instructor and Researcher at the Sociology Department at AUB, as well as the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy & International Affairs and the Asfari Institute for Civil Society & Citizenship also at AUB, Lebanon. Her MA research in Sociology has examined alternative forms of collective mobilization and organization that developed during the 2015 garbage crisis in Lebanon, and was published in the Journal of Critical Sociology and awarded the Erik Olin Wright Distinguished Article Award (2020). Her current research examines the World Bank-funded Bisri Dam project, offering a material hydro-geological lens on post-colonial state-building, and the political economy of infrastructural developments in Lebanon.  In her doctoral research she will be building on the above work, to examine 'crisis narratives' and everyday life amidst the economic and infrastructural collapse in Lebanon.