She holds a professional architecture degree from the RWTH in Aachen, Germany, and a doctorate in urban design from the TU in Vienna. After teaching in the core studios for the urban design program at the Institute of Urban Design and Landscape Architecture at the TU Vienna from 2000–06, El Khafif joined the URBANbuild program at Tulane University in New Orleans in 2006 to support studios at the urban and architectural scales in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. She is co-author of URBANbuild: Local/Global (William Stout Publisher 2009) and has published Staged Urbanism: Urban Spaces for Art, Culture and Consumption in the Age of Leisure Society (VDM Publisher 2009). Her current research operates at multiple scales, examining the interdisciplinary aspects of urban regeneration strategies and urban ecologies.