Hadeel Assali is currently an ACLS Emerging Voices Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Pennsylvania and a former chemical engineer with nearly 10 years of experience with a major oil corporation. She recently completed her Ph.D. in Anthropology at Columbia University. Her dissertation, titled "Prophecies of Palestine: Geology and Intimate Knowledge of the Subterranean" explores the colonial legacies of geology in southern Palestine. She is also a filmmaker working on her first feature-length documentary.