Laure Assaf is an Assistant Professor of Arab Crossroads Studies and Anthropology at New York University Abu Dhabi. Her research interests and teaching focus on youth, urbanity, and migration in contemporary Emirati society and the broader Gulf region. She was trained in anthropology at Paris Nanterre University and in Arabic at the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations (INALCO) in Paris.

She is currently working on a book manuscript entitled Belonging Beyond Citizenship. The Arab Youths of Abu Dhabi. Her research has been published in several French- and English-language journals in urban studies and anthropology such as City (“Abu Dhabi is my sweet home. Arab youths, interstitial spaces and the building of a cosmopolitan locality”, 2020), Population, Space, and Place (“Cosmopolitanism in Exclusionary Contexts” with Hélène Thiollet, 2021), and Arabian Humanities (“La Corniche d’Abu Dhabi : espace public et intimités à ciel ouvert”). She is currently part of several collective research projects: the ANR SpacePol (Space and Politics); Abu Dhabi Public Spaces (a research project from the Anthropocene Research Kitchen, NYUAD); and Gulf Homes: Material Cultures, Family, and Migration (Al-Mashhad x Mangrove Research Kitchen, NYUAD). She is also an Associate Researcher at the French Center for Archeology and Social Sciences (CEFAS) in Kuwait.