is a Lebanese scholartivist, a dramaturg, and a creative writer, whose work bridges performance, literature, research and criticism (more so critical generosity), and a previous career in film, and television production. With a background in theatre and cultural mediation, her oeuvre weaves narrative depth with performative insight.

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Her academic work focuses on performance landscapes in Southwest Asia and North Africa. She is particularly interested in (non-)performance, withdrawal, spatial wounding, trauma, time, laughter, and aphasia in geographies of distress (e.g., Syria, Lebanon, Palestine).  Her research explores the nuanced representations of identity and aesthetics across both local and diasporic stages, with a commitment to decolonizing knowledge production and performance practices. Her research equally includes cultural policies in Lebanon and the Arab World.

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Mona's scholarship has been presented at the UCLA Center for Performance Studies, the “Revels and Rebels” Virtual Symposium at the University of Maryland, the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE), ASTR, and MATC. She has participated in several European and Middle Eastern platforms for theatre, performance, film, cultural management, and philosophy, including the Avignon Theatre Festival (France), Münster Summer School (Germany), Cultural Innovators Network (Greece), and SeSaMO (Società Italiana di Studi sul Medio Oriente – Naples, Italy).

Her research has been published by Routledge and featured in several esteemed journals and platforms, including Critical Stages, La Rivista di Arablit (Sapienza University of Rome), Regards (Audio-Visual Institute at Saint Joseph University, Lebanon), Incertains Regards (Aix-Marseille University, France), and HowlRound.

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Her accolades include the 2024 ATHE award for researchers with heavy teaching load, the 2021 Michael Quinn Writing Prize, the 2022 Graduate School’s Chester Fritz International Research and Study Fellowship, the Presidential Dissertation Fellowship in Arts and Humanities, the Valerie Ellis Fleming Scholarship, the Ashoka Fellowship for Social Entrepreneurs, and the Culture Resource grant for creative writing.

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She is the author of Festivity Under Water/Tabula Rasa (a collection of plays), Out of Service (a short story collection and flipbook), and Domino’s Devils (a short story collection), which was longlisted for the prestigious 2023 Al-Multaqa Prize for the Arabic Short Story. Mona’s creative work explores themes of memory, trauma, identity, and the absurdities of everyday life.

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 After completing her Ph.D. in Theatre History and Performance Studies at The University of Washington, Mona has been teaching Theatre and Performance Studies courses at James Madison University. Her dramaturgical work in the US includes 11th and Pine, In-Between, The Birds, The Antipodes, and Crossing The Water (work-in-progress). Her credits as playwright/director/performer include At That Very Moment and Hot Grilled Marshmallows and Ice Cubes: How to Brand a Tragedy.

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