Zahabiya Yahya is a current Masters student in the MESAAS department. She completed her Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Houston in 2018. Her research interests focus on comparing historical and contemporary representations of the Islamic Veil in the Middle East, while specifically observing post-colonial and imperial influences on its existences throughout the region. She is interested in the individual subjective experiences of women veiling. She speaks Urdu and Gujarati, and has studied Egytian, Yemeni, and Levantine colloquial Arabic.