Soraya Altorki is a professor of anthropology at The American University in Cairo. She holds a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley and has taught at universities across the US and in Saudi Arabia. Her research focuses on women’s issues in the Arab world and she is a founding member of Nour, a Beirut based NGO dedicated to this topic. She is the author and editor of, among others, The Structure/Agency Problem in the Anthropology of the Middle East (2015), Jiddah: Mother of Comfort and Hardship (with Abu Bark Baqadir, 2006, in Arabic), Studying Your Own Society: Arab Women in the Fields (with Camillia el-Solh, 1993), and Women in Saudi Arabia: Ideology and Behavior Among the Elite (1986)