About me
Dr. Shada Bokir is a Yemeni social anthropologist, lecturer, and refugee advocate specializing in gender, postcolonial literature, and Middle Eastern cultural analysis. She is currently an Associate Researcher at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, where she examines women’s resistance, displacement, and colonial legacies in the MENA region.
She earned her Master’s degree in the United States as a Fulbright scholar at Appalachian State University and holds a PhD in Post-Colonial Literature from the National University of Malaysia. Dr. Bokir has contributed to international research projects, taught at leading European universities, and collaborated with organizations including UNHCR on refugee and resettlement issues.
Dr. Shada Bokir is a Yemeni social anthropologist, academic, and refugee advocate whose interdisciplinary work bridges postcolonial literature, gender studies, and Middle Eastern cultural analysis. Her research critically engages with questions of displacement, identity, and power, with a particular focus on women’s resistance and the enduring effects of colonial legacies in the MENA region.
She is currently an Associate Researcher at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (since October 2022), following postdoctoral research at both the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the University of Vienna, where she contributed to projects on Yemeni social and political dynamics and Arabic linguistic variation .
Dr. Bokir earned her PhD in Post-Colonial Literature from the National University of Malaysia in 2019. She previously completed her Master’s degree in English Literature in the United States as a Fulbright scholar at Appalachian State University .
Her academic career includes over a decade of teaching experience in Yemen and Europe, with recent lectureships at the University of Vienna and Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich . Her work has been published in peer-reviewed journals and international platforms, addressing themes such as Orientalism, visual representations of Yemeni women, and literary constructions of gender and identity .
She has presented at major international forums, including UNHCR-led consultations on resettlement and refugee policy, and has been actively involved in refugee education initiatives with the UN Refugee Agency in Malaysia . She is a recipient of several prestigious fellowships, including the Columbia Global Emerging Scholars Program and the Middle Eastern Studies Association fellowship. Fluent in Arabic and English, with working proficiency in German, she brings both academic expertise and field experience to her work at the intersection of research, advocacy, and policy.