Elizabeth Saleh

Elizabeth Saleh works in the fields of political and economic anthropology, with a special focus on labour, gender, childhood, more-than-human relations and epistemic techniques of governance. In 2014, she obtained her PhD in Social Anthropology from Goldsmiths, University of London.

Her doctoral research engaged in ethnographic and archival research to examine the entrepreneurial strategies of members of the wine industry as they converged in the Kefraya region of the West Bekaa. In 2015, Elizabeth commenced a new ethnographic study examining the reconfigurations of labour and commodities at the interface between Beirut's formal and informal economies since the start of the Syrian war. Most of her fieldwork takes place at a scrapyard in a working-class neighbourhood in Beirut, where she explores the effects of conflict and the policies of the Lebanese state toward migration, labour and waste management in relation to the prosperity of the scrap metal industry.

Elizabeth has held posts at the Asfari Institute for Citizenship and Civil Society, the Orient Institute in Beirut, the Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin, the London School of Economic and Goldsmiths, University of London. She is currently a Research Associate at the Center for Arab and Middle East Studies at the American University of Beirut.