Heather Jaber

Heather is a researcher from Beirut. She holds an MA in media studies from the American University of Beirut, where she studied the emerging visibility of characters coded as homosexual in Lebanese musalsalat. She currently works as communications coordinator for the KIP Project, a gender and sexuality project at AUB. Previously, she has worked on research which examined social change in theory and practice in the Arab region. She has worked in the journalism and editorial fields in Lebanon, the US, and Austria, writing for newspapers and seminar programs and serving as editor-in-chief Outlook, the university newspaper at AUB, during her undergraduate years. Upon graduating from her MA, she won the Abdul Hadi Debs Endowment Award for academic excellence and demonstration of research capabilities. Heather is planning on pursuing her PhD in gender or media studies, developing her research on the symbolic function of deviance in the construction of the nation and the political potential of “negative” affect for the development of alternative paradigms and frameworks to emerge.