Rita Sakr

I joined the Department of English at Maynooth University as Lecturer in Postcolonial and Global Literatures, after being Lecturer in World Literature at Goldsmiths (University of London), and previously, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Orient Institut Beirut (Max Weber Foundation), ESRC “Partnership for Conflict, Crime and Security Research” Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Kent, and visiting lecturer at UCD, having completed a PhD at the University of Nottingham, UK.  

My teaching and research interests include literary and cultural production engaging forced displacement, postcolonialism and decoloniality, Middle-Eastern and Mediterranean studies, modern Arab (including diasporic) literature and film, modern Turkish and Kurdish literature in translation, critical geographies and the environmental humanities, the 'right to the city' in literature and film, human rights and humanitarianism, peacekeeping and peace-building, and post-conflict memory studies.  

Recently completed and ongoing PhD supervision includes: "The Production of Space and its Subversive Functions in Contemporary Lebanese Literature" (Farah Aridi, Goldsmiths, completed) "The Body and the Environment in Contemporary Iraqi Literature" (Reema Hassan, MU, ongoing) and, as second supervisor, a project exploring the work of Teju Cole (Andrew Clarke, MU, ongoing).

I am senior co-investigator, with Prof Sinead McGilloway (Principal Investigator-Founder Director of Maynooth Centre for Mental Health and Community Research) and Dr Anthony Malone (senior co-investigator-Maynooth Dep of Education), on a funded (QFI) research programme, titled SALaM-Ireland, part of an international collaboration based at the University of Washington in St Louis. This is a mixed-methods engaged research project that seeks to assess the psychosocial needs of post-primary school students (13-18 years) resettled to Ireland from Arab-majority countries and to identify potential school-based and creative strategies to foster support for this population.

Since 2016, I have been commissioning editor for the Arab, Middle Eastern, and North African (including diasporic) Literatures and Cultures volumes of the Literary Encyclopedia.

From 2016 to 2019, I was a member of the Executive Council of the International Comparative Literature Association.

From February 2019 to January 2022, I coordinated the MA English: Literatures of Engagement.

In October 2021, I convened a free online course on "Global Migrant Literature and Culture" that is part of "A Pilot Project to Enhance Equal Participation and Inclusivity in the Virtual Learning Environment",  for which I received funding (with colleagues in the Department of Law) from the MU Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Fund and the support of Kildare Libraries.

I was a Judge of the 2021 International Dublin Literary Award.