Idil Akinci-Perez is an Early Career Teaching and Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, Department of Sociology, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, and Alwaleed Centre. Her research interests and experience centre around the issues of national identity, citizenship and belonging in multicultural societies, with a focus on the Arab Gulf States. Idil has been working on her project with the UAE born Syrians since 2016 in Dubai, and has received a research grant from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, as a visiting fellow at the GIGA Institute for Middle East Studies. Interim findings of this research has first been presented in 2017, Doha Forum, Qatar, followed by the IMISCOE conference at the University of Erasmus, Rotterdam.