Maria is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages specializing in German literature and integration of Muslim migrants within the German context. Her work explores the identity of Turkish-German secondary school students through performance-based teaching of Goethe’s Faust.
Mariareceived her first bachelor's in Economics from Kinnaird College for Women Lahore, Pakistan, where she is from. She received her second bachelor's degree in Humanities, the Arts and Social Thought from Bard College Berlin, Germany, specializing in Literary Theory and Politics and Ethics. Her MPhil in Cambridge was based at the Faculty of Education where she studied Arts Education researching the impact of museum-based education for the integration of Syrian and Iraqi refugees in Germany. Throughout her academic career, she has been the recipient of the Fulbright Scholarship, British Council Germany IELTS Award, Santander-Cambridge Trust Scholarship, and St. Edmund’s College Paul Luzio Scholarship.
She is an actress and a theatre director and has performed at venues such as Shakespeare's Globe Theatre at the Globe to Globe Festival 2012.
Maria has been a convenor of the Cambridge Interdisciplinary Performance Network since 2018.
