She holds a B.A in History from Wesleyan University, a M.A. in History from Trinity College in Hartford, Ct and a PhD in History from Northeastern University in Boston. She researches 19th century Egypt and has written on Gender during the Egyptian Revolution of 1919, Cholera in the Egyptian Delta and is currently writing a manuscript about modern Egypt. She lived and conducted research in Egypt from 2007 to 2010 with a grant from Fulbright and the State Department (CAORC) and has traveled to Egypt on a number of occassions between July 2001 and 2015.