He trained as a medical doctor in Iraq during the 1990s and received his PhD in Social Anthropology from Harvard University in 2008. He teaches a variety of courses on social medicine, global health and medical anthropology. His research interests include biopolitics, war, colonialism, global health, and the Iraqi state. He has conducted ethnographic fieldwork on the exodus of Iraqi doctors to Britain and across the Middle East. Currently, he is conducting research on Iraqi patients seeking medical care in Beirut for cancer and war-related injuries. He is finishing a book manuscript titled Ungovernable Life: War and Mandatory Medicine in Iraq. He leads the War and Global Health Working Group at AUB and is one of the contributors to the Costs of War Project at Brown University.