She is a professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Program Chair in Islamic Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
Her dissertation on gender and linguistic innovation was written under the supervision of William Labov, Gillian Sankoff, and Charles Ferguson.
Her first book, published in 1997, is titled: The Sociolinguistic Market of Cairo: Gender, Class and Education.
[4] Co-edited and co-authored works of hers include: Structuralist Studies in Arabic Linguistics: Charles A. Ferguson's Papers, 1954-1994 (with A. Belnap, 1997); New Perspectives in Arabic Linguistics (with E. Bannamoun and M. Eid, 1998); Langue, Religion, et Modernité dans l’Espace Musulman (with C. Miller, 2008).
[6][7] She won the Johns Hopkins Discovery Award in 2019 along with Professors Anne Eakin Moss and Narges Bajoghli for their project entitled "Invitation to the masses: The Russian and Iranian Revolutions and their Arts of Persuasion.