My central research interest concerns relationships among global policies and local feminist movements and discourses. My book manuscript (forthcoming, University of Minnesota Press), explores these relationships through investigating the dynamics amongst two major, polarized women’s movements: Islamist groups which privilege Islamic Law as the unique framework for building a culture of women’s rights; and feminist groups which use the United Nations’ framework and the discourse of gender equality to amend the sharia-based family law. I illustrate how the oppositional politics and agendas mobilized by these two movements over the past two decades have transformed the discourses, structures and strategies of the other, as well as public discourse at large and state gender policies.  In my current research I explore the connections between gender, the war on terror and neoliberal reforms in the Middle East.