Dr. Sylvia Maier is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Center for Global Affairs where she directs the MSGA Concentration in Global Gender Studies, the Global Field Intensive to the United Arab Emirates, and serves as faculty adviser to the MSGA Gender Working Group. Sylvia’s principal fields of interest and expertise are women’s rights in the Middle East, South Central Asia, and the Gulf States, with a particular focus on the United Arab Emirates, Iraqi Kurdistan, and Afghanistan, where she has taught and conducted extensive field research. Sylvia is especially interested in women’s culturally-situated strategies of (self-) empowerment and modes of resistance to patriarchy in deeply traditional societies, the “globalization-empowerment nexus” in the Gulf States, and the politics of integration and multiculturalism in Western Europe, chiefly the legal responses to cultural diversity and honor-based violence against women. She has spoken and published on these and related subjects.