Hometown: Knoxville, Tennessee, USA

Research interests: Anti-blackness in the Arab World, refugee integration, equitable distribution of humanitarian aid, women’s empowerment, globalization

Born in Khartoum, Sudan, Nisrine and her family (now from South Sudan) immigrated to the US from Lebanon as refugees in 2000. In May 2021, she graduated from Sewanee: The University of the South with a degree in International & Global Studies and a minor in Women & Gender Studies. During her undergraduate career, she participated in the US Department of State’s Critical Languages Scholarship Program for the study of Arabic in Morocco in 2019 (in-person) and 2020 (remote). After her time in Morocco in 2019, she spent the following semester studying Syrian refugee integration and humanitarian aid in Jordan and Switzerland. Inspired by her experience as a Black woman in Morocco, Jordan, and later, Egypt, her undergraduate thesis analyzes the ways in which anti-blackness intersects with other forms of discrimination to hinder Sudanese refugees in Jordan from accessing humanitarian aid and integrating into their host society. In the MAAS program, she hopes to continue exploring the history and development of anti-blackness in the Arab World and its impact on Black Sub-Saharan African refugees and asylum seekers in the region today. Upon graduating from MAAS, Nisrine hopes to find a career in humanitarianism.