She studied history and the Arabic language at Leiden University in the Netherlands, where she obtained her master's degree.

She also pursued the same specializations at several universities, including the University of Damascus, the University of Cambridge, Cornell University, and Princeton University, where she earned both her master's and doctoral degrees.

Her doctoral dissertation focused on Near Eastern studies in 2004 and she received the department's annual prize for the best dissertation.

Practical Experiences:

She was an emerging research fellow in Eastern Studies at Christ Church College, Oxford University (2003-2007), before moving to the French National Center for Scientific Research in Paris as a research supervisor.

She was awarded the prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Scholarship, known as Starter Scholarship in 2007.

She was appointed as a professor in the Chair of Arabic Language and Culture at Leiden University in 2008.

She was the founding President of the International Society for Arabic Papyrology (2001-2014) and a research fellow at the Andrew W. Mellon Center for Research in a project to catalogue and index papyri in the Austrian National Library (2013-2014).

She served as a visiting professor at the Higher School for Social Studies in Paris and at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt.

From 2014 to 2018, she was the director of the Leiden University Centre for the Study of Islam (LUCIS).

Since 2016, she has been a member of the International Society for Arabic Papyrology.

Some of her works include:

With A.T. Schubert (eds.), "Documents and the History of the Early Islamic World." Leiden: Brill, 2014.

"Shaping a Muslim State. The World of a Mid-Eighth-Century Egyptian Official." Oxford University Press, 2013.

"Why Arabic?" Leiden University Press, 2012.

With R. Margariti and A. Sabra (eds.), "Histories of the Middle East. Studies in Middle Eastern Society, Economy and Law in Honor of A.L. Udovitch." Leiden: Brill, 2010.