Status Audio Magazine

Adel Iskandar is Assistant Professor of Global Communication at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. He is the author, coauthor, and editor of several works including Egypt In Flux: Essays on an Unfinished Revolution (AUCP/OUP), Al-Jazeera: The Story of the Network that is Rattling Governments and Redefining Modern Journalism (Basic Books), Edward Said: A Legacy of Emancipation and Representation (University of California Press), and Mediating the Arab Uprisings (Tadween Publishing). Iskandar's work deals with media, identity and politics and has lectured extensively on these topics at universities worldwide. His latest publication is the co-edited volume Media Evolution on the Eve of the Arab Spring (Palgrave Macmillan). Iskandar taught for several years at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies and the Communication, Culture, and Technology program at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. He is a co-editor of Jadaliyya.

Laila El-Haddad was born in Kuwait and raised mainly in Saudi Arabia, where her parents worked; but the whole family summered each year in her parents’ hometown, Gaza City. She received her B.A. from Duke University and her MPP from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. El-Haddad is the co-editor of Gaza Unsilenced (2015), the author of Gaza Mom: Palestine, Politics, Parenting, and Everything In Between (2010), and co-author of The Gaza Kitchen: A Palestinian Culinary Journey (2013), which was named Arab Cuisine Book of the Year 2012 by Gourmand magazine. She is an accomplished and engaging public speaker, a talented writer, political analyst, a social activist, parent of three, and a policy advisor for Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network.

Twitter: @gazamom

Annia Ciezadlo received her M.A. in journalism from New York University in 2000. In late 2003, she left New York for Baghdad, where she worked for The Christian Science Monitor. She has also written about culture, politics, and the Middle East for The New Republic, The Nation, The Washington Post, the National Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, The New York Observer, and Lebanon’s Daily Star. Annia lives between New York and Beirut. Author of "Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War," a mixture of memoir and reportage about daily civilian life and their struggle over food during wartime in Beirut and Baghdad. "Day of Honey" won the American Book Award and the James Beard Foundation Awards (finalist, Writing and Literature.)

https://www.anniaciezadlo.com/

Twitter: @annia

Reem Kassis was born in Jerusalem to a Palestinian family revered for its cooks. Growing up, she spent days in her grandmothers’, mother’s, and aunts’ kitchens observing and soaking up everything there was to know about Palestinian cooking. A graduate of The Wharton School and the LSE, Reem is a social psychologist and business consultant by training. At heart, however, she is a cook and a writer. Today she is using the power of food, family, and storytelling to preserve the rich culinary traditions of Palestinians and to share them with the world. She currently resides in Philadelphia with her husband and two daughters. Her first book The Palestinian Table was named one of NPR’s best books of 2017 and has been featured in The New York Times, New York Magazine, Saveur, food52, Travel + Leisure, and Departures. 

www.reemkassis.com

Instagram: @reem.kassis

Born in Venezuela to a Middle Eastern family and growing up in Miami, Tony Tahhan draws inspiration from a variety of cultures. Tony pursued degrees in Math, Economics, and Spanish Literature from Cornell University. As an elective course, he explored food anthropology and became fascinated by its stories, traditions, and taboos. In 2010, Tony was awarded a Fulbright Research grant to Syria, where he studied the midday meal in three contexts: at homes, in restaurants, and in the streets. From cooking to eating, food was a natural vehicle for cultural exchange and one that he continues to explore. From his current home in Baltimore, Tony documents recipes and stories from Aleppo and his many travels, bringing people together online and in person around the love of food.

https://www.antoniotahhan.com/

Anne Meneley is a cultural anthropologist hailing from Petersborough, Ontario, where she is a professor of Anthropology at Trent University. She earned degrees from McGill University (B.A.) and New York University (M.A. and PhD), conducting research specifically on the Middle East, religion and worldview, and histories of anthropology. Her publications include the book, Tournaments of Value: Sociability and Hierarchy in a Yemeni Town (Toronto, 1996), based on fieldwork she conducted in Yemen. Her most recent paper on Yemen is published in Illness and Irony, eds. M Lambek and P. Antze (2004). She has served as a board member of the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association. Her recent work deals with the production, circulation and consumption of olive oil in Italy and Palestine.