Joanna Abillama

Joanna Abillama is a graduate student in the MA in Interdisciplinary Gender Studies at the Lebanese American University. Previously, she earned a BA in Psychology from the American University of Beirut and an MA in Theatre/ Drama Therapy from Kansas State University as a Fulbright scholar. Currently, she is part of the research project "Mapping the Production of Knowledge on Women and Gender in the Arab region," under the auspices of the University of California Davis Arab Region Consortium (UCDAR), in partnership with the Arab Council for the Social Sciences (ACSS). Her topics of interest include gender bias in the mental health fields, lived experiences of madness, the link between queerness and neurodivergence, performance theory, and the integration of arts-based methodologies in research. In addition to her academic pursuits, she has turned many times to creative writing and theatre as conduits for both therapeutic processes and social activism.