Rawda started her LSE-funded PhD at the Department of Gender Studies in 2024. Her research examines gender, sexuality, and religion as travelling concepts and how they may transform, shift, or otherwise reproduce established epistemological paradigms in relation to the community of Egyptian queer exiles in London. Rawda’s project builds on feminist, queer, and decolonial theory and tries to think through and complicate local/global, western/eastern, and imperialist/culturally authentic dichotomies that dictate debates on gender and sexuality in the Middle East.

Rawda holds an MA in Gender, Politics, and International Relations from University College Dublin and she also studied Critical Gender Studies at Central European University. She situates herself between research and practice, having worked as a human rights researcher and advocate at several Egyptian and international civil society organizations focusing on political prisoners and criminal justice in Egypt and beyond.  

Supervisory Team: Dr Clare Hemmings and Dr Hakan Sandal-Wilson