MONA MERHI has a multi-hyphenate career path alternating between creative writing, research, TV and film production, theatre making, cultural management, and arts journalism. Being a theatre critic in many local and regional newspapers in the Arab world, Mona published articles relating to variegated performance landscapes. She was equally involved in research projects delving into cultural policies.

Mona moved to the U.S. in 2019 to pursue her doctoral degree at the University of Washington. Her dissertation work investigates the maneuverings of space and place in post-uprising Syrian performances in contiguity to un-utterance and trauma studies.

Her academic research was presented at the UCLA Center for Performance Studies, Maryland University “Revels and Rebels” Virtual Symposium, the Association for Theatre and Higher Education (ATHE), ASTR, and MATC. She was invited to participate in many European and Middle Eastern platforms of theatre, performance, film, cultural management, and philosophy, among which are the Avignon Theatre Festival (France), Münster Summer School (Germany), Cultural Innovators Network (Greece),  SeSamo (Società Italiana di Studi sul Medio Oriente – Naples, Italy). 

Mona received the Michael Quinn Writing Prize for 2021, the Graduate School Chester Fritz International Research and Study Fellowship, the Graduate School Presidential Dissertation Fellowship in Arts and Humanities, The Valerie Ellis Fleming Scholarship fund, the Ashoka Fellowship for Social Entrepreneurs, and the Culture Resource grant for creative writing.

She recently served as a researcher/dramaturg for the staged reading of Eleventh and Pine written by Professor Nikki Yeboah, and as a dramaturg for Yun’s In Between. Mona was pleased to join the JMU’s Theatre and Dance program in the fall of 2023 and serve as a lecturer.