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Linda Sayed

Linda Sayed
  • Associate Professor
  • Faculty

BIOGRAPHY

Professor Sayed is an associate professor of Comparative Cultures and Politics at James Madison College (JMC). She is a core faculty member of the Muslim Studies Program, and affiliate faculty of the Center of Gender in Global Context, and the Global Studies Program. Prior to arriving to JMC, Professor Sayed was at New York University, where she taught courses on Islam, gender, nationalism, colonialism, and Middle East history and politics. She holds a master’s degree in Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies from Columbia University.

Professor Sayed is an interdisciplinary scholar of the contemporary Middle East and the Arab diaspora. Her research focuses on the politics of citizenship as it relates to marginalized communities, refugee rights, health care accessibility, and systems of national and international governance that inform global public health concerns in the Middle East and among Arab communities in the United States. Her current research focuses on Syrian refugee’s rights to health services and the political infrastructures that determine accessibility to those services in the context of Lebanon. This research assesses the ways in which Syrians negotiate health and social services, and the complexities that exist in both the structures of international aid, and the political infrastructure of Lebanon that limit the services Syrian refugees have access to.

Professor Sayed is also involved in two separate research projects examining the impact of COVID-19 on marginalized groups in the U.S. One of those projects supported by MCCFAD investigates the psychosocial impact of the pandemic on aging Middle Eastern/Arab American immigrants and/or refugees in Michigan based on qualitative research conducted at local Arab organizations and institutions. Her previous research explored the role marginalized religious groups played in the construction of the nation-state and the politicization of sectarian identity as it concerned the Shi'a of Lebanon during the French Mandate period. This research studied the power of sectarianism in shaping everyday experiences and politics for Lebanese Shi’a.

In 2024, Professor Sayed received the MSU All-University Teacher-Scholar Award.

PUBLICATIONS

Sayed Linda, Mohammed Alanazi, and Kristine J. Ajrouch. “Intergenerational Relations and Well-Being Among Older Middle Eastern/Arab American Immigrants during the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Research on Aging, Vol.47, No. 1, January 2025:66-76.

Brown, J. Monique, Paris B. Adkins-Jackson, Linda Sayed, Fei Wang, Amanda Leggett, Lindsay Ryan. “The Worst of Times: Depressive Symptoms among Racialized Groups living with Dementia and Cognitive Impairment during Two Major National/Global Events,” Journal of Aging and Health, Vol. 36, No. 9, October 2024:535-545.

Sayed Linda, Mohammed Alanazi, and Kristine J. Ajrouch. “Self-Reported Cognitive Ageing and Well-Being among Older Middle Eastern/Arab American Immigrants during the COVID-19 Pandemic,” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, Vol. 20, No. 11, 2023: 5918. 

Garcia Marc, Erica D. Diminich, Peiyi Lu, Sandra P. Arevalo, Linda Sayed, Randa Abdelrahim, and Kristine J. Ajrouch. “Caregiving for Foreign-Born Older Adults with Dementia.” Journal of Gerontology, Series B, Vol. 78, Supplement 1, 2023: S4–S14.

Sayed, Linda. “Negotiating Citizenship: Shi‘i Families and the Ja‘fari Shari‘a Courts in Lebanon.” In Practicing Sectarianism in Lebanon: Archival and Ethnographic Interventions. Eds. Lara Deeb, Tsolin Nalbantian, and Nadya Sbaiti. Stanford University Press, 2022.

Webster DG, Mark Axelrod, Semra A. Aytur, Robyn S. Wilson, Joseph A. Hamm, Linda Sayed, Amber Pearson, Siddharth Chandra, Pedro Torres, Alero Akporiaye, and Oran Young.“Learning From the Past: Pandemics and Global Health Governance,” Sustainability, Vol. 14, No. 6, 2022: 3683.

Sayed, Linda. “Asserting Roots: Muhammad Jabir al-Safa and the Writing of a Shiʿa History during the French Mandate” The Muslim World, Vol. 110, No. 2, 2020: 246–258.

Sayed, Linda. “Education and Re-Configuring Lebanese Shiʿi Muslims Children into the Nation-State during the French Mandate,” Die Welt des Islam: International Journal for the Study of Modern Islam, Vol. 59, No. 3/4, 2019: 282–312.