Laure Assaf is an anthropologist and a specialist of Middle Eastern studies. Her research interests focus on youth, urbanity, and migration in contemporary Emirati society and the broader Gulf region. She was trained in anthropology at Paris Nanterre University and in Arabic at the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations in Paris. She is currently working on a book manuscript derived from her PhD thesis, entitled Arab Youths of Abu Dhabi: Status Categories, Urban Sociability and the Shaping of Subjectivities in the United Arab Emirates (2017). She is also an associate researcher at the French Center for Archeology and Social Sciences in Kuwait.