Layal Ftouni

researcher and educator

Layal Ftouni is an assistant professor of gender studies and critical theory at the Graduate Gender Programme at Utrecht University, Utrecht.

Her teaching is transdisciplinary, crossing fields of gender and sexuality studies, cultural studies, political theory, visual studies, and critical race studies. In 2020, Ftouni was awarded the Dutch Research Council (NWO) VENI grant (2022) to undertake a new research project entitled Ecologies of Violence: Affirmations of Life at the Frontiers of Survival. The research explores the politics of life and living at the boundaries with death—both human and environmental—in conditions of war and settler colonialism, focusing on Syria and Palestine.