Rawan Arar is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of California, San Diego and a graduate student researcher at the Center for Comparative and Immigration Studies.

She graduated with a BA in sociology from the University of Texas at San Antonio in 2008 and an MA in Women’s and Gender Studies from the University of Texas at Austin in 2010.

Rawan’s research interests include international immigration, refugee studies and forced migration, human rights, gender, law, and the Middle East. Her dissertation operationalises “the refugee burden” from the top-down, through state-centric concerns, and from the bottom-up, privileging the voices of refugees and host populations. Rawan investigates the case of Jordan, a country that has accommodated refugees from Palestine, Iraq, and now Syria, for approximately 70 years.