Tess is currently a graduate student in the Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University, where they are a Dean’s Humanities Fellow and are affiliated with the Ottoman and Turkish Studies initiative. They received an MA in Near Eastern Studies from the Hagop Kevorkian Center at New York University in 2023. From 2016-2018 they studied in the M.Sc. Program in Social Anthropology in the Sociology Department at Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. They received a joint B.A. (magna cum laude) in Religious Studies and Asian and Middle East Studies from Kenyon College in May 2013.
Tess lived in central Turkey for five and a half years. In the 2013-15 academic years, Tess was a Fulbright U.S. Student Program English Teaching Assistantship grantee in Kirikkale, Turkey.
The proud grandchild of the late Maryse and Ramzy Mikhail, they serve on the steering committee for their Memorial Lecture Series at the University of Toledo, and maintain the Lecture Series’ web and social media presence.
Tess is a member of the Middle East Studies Association, and has held memberships in the Arab American Institute’s National Policy Council, the American Anthropological Association, the American-Arab Anti Discrimination Committee (ADC), and the Network of Arab American Professionals (NAAP), among others.
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tess m. waggoner 