Hebah Farrag was the assistant director of research at the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture through 2023. She managed large grant-based research projects while pursuing her own research on religion, social change and new spiritualties. Recent projects include the Spiritual Exemplars Project, the Religious Competition and Creative Innovation project, a $2.6 million initiative funded by the John Templeton Foundation that investigates the link between religious competition, cooperation and innovation in Los Angeles and Seoul, South Korea and the Pentecostal and Charismatic Research Project, among others. Farrag also served as one of the center’s primary evaluators in many measurement, learning and evaluation projects.
Her current research focuses on faith-based resilience metrics, measuring impact in community groups and new spiritualties emerging from Black Lives Matter-affiliated organizations.
Farrag has been quoted by a variety of publications, including the L.A. Times, The Jewish Standard, Truthdig, and The Jewish Journal News, and she has written for publications such as Religion Dispatches, On Being with Krista Tippett and Forced Migration Online.
Farrag is the former assistant director of the Center for Muslim-Jewish Engagement, an institutional partnership between the CRCC, the Omar Ibn Al Khattab Foundation and Hebrew Union College. She is an alumni of the American Muslim Civic Leadership Institute and has worked with the Muslim Public Affairs Council, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Global Exchange, and Casa Del Pueblo and is interested in issues concerning religion, the politics of identity, new spiritualties and social change.
She is a graduate from the American University in Cairo (AUC) receiving a Masters in Middle East Studies. She also holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and International Relations from the University of Southern California and a Graduate Diploma in Forced Migration and Refugee Studies from the AUC.
Areas of Expertise:
- The Spirituality of Black Lives Matter
- New spiritualties and social change movements
- Islam in the US: Institutions, Identity and Shifting practice
- Middle East politics, religion and social movements
- Middle East and Africa Refugee Policy
- Muslim Women and Catholic Sisters
