Marybelle Issa

Language and identity; semiotic landscapes; art, activism and protest rhetoric; narratives of displacement; Palestine, Lebanon.

Marybelle is a PhD student in Linguistic Anthropology studying the intersections between language and identity. Her current research project proposes to explore the semiotic landscapes of Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and the uses of spaces of repression as sites of defiance. She holds degrees from Simon Fraser University and Sciences Po Paris where she studied political science, international affairs and sociolinguistics. Her master's dissertation at SFU, which received unanimous honorable mention from her committee, examined identification and political participation on social media through the use of semiotic material by Lebanese political activists in the wake of the 2020 explosions at the Port of Beirut.