I am the Middle East Correspondent for the Financial Times covering Iraq, Syria and Lebanon from her base in Beirut.

My work has tended to focus on in-depth coverage of conflict-ravaged societies, looking in detail at the security sector, human rights, corruption and abuses of power.

Most recently, I covered the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria and the rise of the country’s new leaders from Damascus. This followed months of covering the wars in Lebanon and Gaza, including deeply reported stories on Israel’s military conduct in Lebanon.

Until 2022, I was Senior Correspondent for Reuters covering Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, focusing on politics, human rights and the rapid pace of social transformation.

From 2017-2020, I served as the agency’s correspondent in Iraq, where I investigated the illicit cross-border transfer of Islamic State detainees by US forces; wrote about the foreign children left behind by Islamic State, the Iraqis deported from the US following the 2017 travel ban and the ravages left by war, among others. I witnessed the emergence of Iraq’s mass protests in 2019, and reported extensively on their brutal crackdown.

Before joining Reuters in 2017, I was a news editor and reporter at The Guardian in New York, on both the US and international news desks.

I hold a masters degree from Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism and an undergraduate degree in history from the University of Pennsylvania. I am frequently invited to share my analysis and field reporting at think tanks briefings and conferences, including at Chatham House and The Century Foundation. I speak Arabic, French and Spanish fluently and am conversant in German.