Zainab Saleh

Zainab Saleh is Professor of Anthropology at Haverford College. Her research focuses on subjectivity, nostalgia, belonging, war, empire, citizenship laws, and violence in Iraq and the Iraqi Diaspora. She is the author of Political Undesirables: Citizenship, Denaturalization, and Reclamation in Iraq (Stanford University Press, 2026), and Return to Ruin: Iraqi Narratives of Exile and Nostalgia (Stanford University Press, 2021; Winner of The Evelyn Shakir Non-Fiction Award at the Arab American Book Award). Her work also appeared in American Anthropologist, Arab Studies Journal, Anthropology News, Journal of Contemporary Iraq and the Arab World, Costs of War project with Brown University, Political and Legal Anthropology Review, Palestine/Israel Review, and Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East.