Zenia has a PhD from the University of Copenhagen on contentious politics among Arab media users in Europe. Her dissertation focused on the role of the media in political activism among Syrian diaspora groups in Denmark, Sweden, and Germany. She holds an MA in Middle Eastern Studies with Arabic from the University of Copenhagen and a BA in Arab and Islamic Studies from Aarhus University. She studied at Lund University's media department and was a visiting scholar at the Freie Universität in Berlin. She is a member of the editorial board of the Scandinavian Journal of Islamic Studies. She has been teaching the MA course Media in the Middle East at the University of Copenhagen and has published several articles on diasporic media practices and the uprising in Syria. Zenia’s research interests revolve around the modern history of the Middle East and North Africa, as well as media and migration. She is interested in how media representations, among other factors, form identity processes and feelings of belonging. She is also concerned with research methods and methodological reflections, especially in relation to conducting fieldwork.
Key Publications (two are in Danish, marked with (*)):
*2022, ‘Bulbul al-thawra: Revolutionens Sangfugl, Babylon - Nordisk Tidsskrift for Midtøstenstudier, 20 (1).
2022, ‘Mediated Complexities of Belonging and Political (De)mobilization: Syrian Dissidents in Europe’, Arab Reform Initiative: The New Arab Diaspora Series.
*’Medienarrativer og forståelser af religion i den syriske diaspora’, Tidsskrift for Islamforskning, 4 (1),
2021, ‘Between Sect and Secularism: The Mediated Ambiguities of the Syrian Nation State’, Global media journal (GMJ) German edition, 10, 2 (1).
2020, ‘Ambiguous Belonging: Media Practices among Syrians in Denmark’, Journal of Arab & Muslim Media Research, 13 (1).