She holds a PhD in Religious Studies from the University of Toronto and she conducts ethnographic research on Shīʿah practices and discourses in contemporary Syria and Iraq. She has published several articles on Shīʿah Islam in Syria, wherein she explores topics including the Karbala Paradigm, the State of Exception, and the politics of religious education. Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Shi‘a Islamic Studies, the International Journal of Middle East Studies, and Politics of Worship in the Contemporary Middle East: Sainthood in Fragile States (Leiden, 2013). She is currently preparing a manuscript on women’s seminaries and Muharram mourning rituals in the Syrian shrine town of Sayyida Zaynab prior to the 2011 uprising. Professor Edith Szanto has been a Fellow of the Shīʿah Institute since September 2015.