Layal Ftouni is an Assistant Professor of Gender Studies and Critical Theory at the Graduate Gender Programme, and a research affiliate at the Institute of Cultural Inquiry (ICON) at Utrecht University. As a core faculty member, Layal teaches variety of courses in Gender Studies and supervises dissertations on MA, RMA, and PhD levels.
Layal’s research and teaching is transdisciplinary. She works across the fields of gender and sexuality studies, cultural studies, political theory, visual studies and critical race studies. In 2020, Layal was awarded the Dutch Research Council (NWO) VENI grant (start date 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. She is also currently working on a journal issue entitled Radical Kinship: Solidarity and Ethico-Political Belonging for Darkmatter journal (2023). The journal addresses the urgency of intersectional solidarity and coalitional politics in our current global political conjuncture. In the face of increasing normalization of right-wing ideologies, racism, and enduring settler colonialism; as well as global calamities, both human and environmental, the journal asks what a left politics that refuses single-issue struggles and that is orientated towards utopian futures might look like.
Before joining Utrecht University in Sept 2016, Layal lectured (2013 - 2016) at the Centre for Media and Cultural Studies at SOAS, University of London and completed her PhD at the University of Westminster. She also co-founded the Arab Cultural Studies Group and edited (with Tarik Sabry) of Arab Subcultures: Transformations in Theory and Practice (I.B.Tauris, 2017).
In 2020, Layal was awarded the VENI research grant from the Dutch Research Council (2022-2025) - Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO). She was also the 2020 Global Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at NYU. Previous awards include Arab Council for Social Sciences (ACSS) research grant, Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) grant for a fully funded PhD scholarship at the University of Westminster (U.K.), and an MA scholarship from the School of Social Science, Media, and Cultural Studies, UEL (U.K.)