I hold a PhD in Romance Languages (Spanish and French), and research postcolonial cultural production. I specialize in comparative immigration studies, transnational identities, and Islam in the West. I am particularly interested in how the Moorish history of Al-Andalus (711-1492) is being revisited by African and Arab immigrants to Europe, North America, and Latin America as a way to defuse the racialization of the Islamic faith by proclaiming Islam as a European religion with an historical legacy to the region. I have published in the Journal of North African Studies, Muftah.org, and Arab Media & Society, among other outlets. My book Immigration, Popular Culture, and the Re-Routing of European Muslim Identity was released by Palgrave Macmillan in 2012.