Mona Atia is Associate Professor of Geography and International Affairs at the George Washington University and Director of the Institute for Middle East Studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs. She is a critical development geographer whose areas of expertise include poverty, philanthropy, human development and the spatial politics of marginalization. She is author of Building a House in Heaven: Pious Neoliberalism and Islamic Charity in Egypt (University of Minnesota Press, 2013). Her recent publications include a peer-reviewed article in Antipode, an invited article in Middle East Report and editorial work on a special issue of Cities including an introductory essay. Her work has appeared in Cities, Antipode, the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Social and Cultural Geography, the Journal of Islamic and Near Eastern Law, and Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, Middle East Report, Nonprofit Policy Forum and the International Journal of Middle East Studies. She serves on the editorial board of the Middle East Report. She teaches courses on the geography of the Middle East and North Africa at the graduate and undergraduate level in addition to courses on human geography, the geography of development, qualitative methods and geographic thought. She recently completed an NSF CAREER award for a five-year project that examines the production, use and impact of poverty mapping in France and Morocco and is has submitted four grant applications for work to support the Institute for Middle East Stdies.