Elizabeth H. Shlala is a historian of the Middle East and North Africa. She is the Associate Dean and Professor of the Practice in the University Core Curriculum at Boston College. She has appointments with the History Department, International Studies, and Islamic Civilization and Societies Programs. Dean Shlala is the founding director of the Core’s Justice and the Common Good Living and Learning Community. She teaches the Enduring Question course, Geographies of Imperialism: History of Colonization. Her most recent book is entitled, The Late Ottoman Empire and Egypt: Hybridity, Law and Gender. She sits on the editorial boards of the Contemporary Levant Journal and HAWWA: Journal of Women of the Middle East and the Islamic World. She has extensive research experience in Egypt, Italy, Sri Lanka, and Turkey. Her current research focuses on the “engendering” imperial projects of women living between the British and Ottoman empires, and the processes of gendered historical production.

Dean Shlala holds a B.S. in Foreign Service, M.A.’s and a Ph.D. in History from Georgetown University. She was a Fulbright-Hays DDRA fellow in Egypt. She currently is working on a Certificate in Jesuit Studies at the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies at Boston College.