Heba Taha is a scholar of Politics and International Relations. Her work lies at the intersection of political economy and security in the modern Middle East, particularly Israel/Palestine. Her doctoral work analyzes the role of Palestinians in Israeli capitalism, focusing on everyday encounters and non-conventional sites of contestation, such as high-tech firms and shopping centers. More recently, she is also researching nuclear histories and technologies in the Middle East, some of which has been published in Third World Quarterly, International Affairs, and Global Affairs. Her article on gender and visualization of the nuclear age in Egypt won the 2023 International Affairs Early Career Prize. She is also an Affiliated Scholar at the Center for International Studies (CERI) at Sciences Po, where she collaborates with the Nuclear Knowledges research collective.
Heba’s research is interested in the nuclear age from below. Her work centers embodied and lived experiences of the nuclear condition in the Middle East. It considers how nuclear technologies become enmeshed with everyday lives and spaces, and how their effects are simultaneously material and symbolic. She is interested in stories and imaginations of the nuclear age, paying attention to anxieties, apprehensions, and even apathy, and how they interact with broader technologies of securitization and racialization.