Laure Salma Assaf
Assistant Professor of Arab Crossroads Studies, Anthropology and Social Research and Public Policy
Affiliation: NYU Abu Dhabi
Education: PhD Paris Nanterre University
Research Areas: Arabian Peninsula; United Arab Emirates, Youth, Migration, Hierarchies, Social change, Anthropology
Laure Assaf is an anthropologist and a specialist in Middle Eastern studies. Her research interests focus on youth, urbanity, migration, and temporality in the contemporary Emirati society and the broader Gulf region.
She was trained in anthropology at Paris Nanterre University (Master's, PhD) and in Arabic at the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations (INALCO) in Paris. She is also an Associate Researcher at the French Research Centre of the Arabian Peninsula (CEFREPA) in Kuwait.
Assaf's research has notably been published in the scholarly journals City; Population, Space and Place; and Arabian Humanities. She is currently working on a book project entitled Arab Youth of Abu Dhabi. Becoming a Subject in the Global City, an ethnography of the everyday experiences of young, middle-class Emiratis and Arab expatriates coming of age in the first decades of the 21st century. The book explores the importance of place in shaping contemporary subjects, through the notion of citadinité (urban membership) and its potential to form a counterpoint to national belonging.
Assaf’s recent works analyze the evolution of social and moral norms in the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula through the lens of pop culture (Arabian Humanities, 2023; Afikra podcast, 2025), as well as through urban development and the territories of alcohol (Revue Méditerranée, 2025). She has also embarked on a longer research project addressing the experiences of time in the region, in particular official representations of the future (Les Cahiers d’EMAM, 2020; Terrain, 2023). She is also a co-editor of Wasafiri 122 “The UAE Issue.”