Randa Tawil is an Assistant Professor of Women and Gender Studies at Texas Christian University. She received her doctorate in the Department of American Studies at Yale University, and she specializes in migration and mobility, ethnic studies, and Arab/Middle Eastern American studies. She is interested in how race and gender are made meaningful for migrants during transit, and how sites outside of the United States contribute to racial and gender formations within the country.

Her manuscript, Race in Transit: Mobilities between Greater Syria and North America examines knowledge production around the “good” and “bad” migrant from Syria through the lens of mobility. Connecting archives in Lebanon, France, Mexico, and the United States, she recreates the routes of French shipping companies, US immigrant inspectors, Syrian migrants, and European missionaries to show how race, gender, and sexuality were made meaningful categories not just in the “home” or “destination” country, but in the routes in between.

She is an experienced teacher who has taught both introductory and upper level courses in Gender Studies, Ethnic Studies, and critical refugee studies. In 2021 she was awarded the Wise Woman Teacher of the Year at TCU. She has articles published in academic journals, The Washington Post, and Open Democracy.