RANDA SERHAN
Department of Sociology, Barnard College
Lecturer of Sociology
Department Profile
Randa Serhan is a political sociologist and ethnographer. Her research interests focus on citizenship and the experiences of belonging in a myriad of spaces. She has been in the field studying community building and integration of Palestinian Americans, an ethnic and oft stigmatized minority, in New York metropolitan area. She is currently revising her manuscript to incorporate the events and heightened attention this community has received in recent years. A by-product of this research has been an interest in surveillance, which has turned into a multi-sited survey gauging New Yorkers’ understanding and perceptions of street technologies that have expanded in density across the 5 boroughs. In the past, she has studied Palestinian life as refugees both in and outside camps in Lebanon.
Randa is a Lecturer of Sociology at Barnard College where she has taught a range of courses which included Surveillance; Transnationalism, Citizenship, and Belonging; Power, Arab New York; advised senior theses. She is adding Immigrant New York to her roster.
Prior to joining Barnard, Randa was tenure track in sociology at American University in Washington, DC where she founded and directed Arab World Studies; a degree-granting program. She has also taught at the American University of Beirut, Columbia College, and SIPA. She received her PhD from Columbia University in Sociology.
