Lara Sabra is an anthropology PhD candidate at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her doctoral dissertation project researches prison systems in Lebanon by drawing on the memories and creative practices of formerly incarcerated women. She has been actively involved in state-opposition groups in Lebanon and was a Graduate Assistant at the UMass Jail Education Initiative for three years. These combined experiences have deeply influenced her goals: she aspires to work collaboratively with her interlocutors to imagine/create alternative realities, worlds, and futures.

Research Project

Building Futures Beyond Carceral Warscapes: A Creative Ethnography with Lebanon's Formerly Incarcerated Women

Carceral power, in its formations and formulations, increasingly shapes the global condition. From El Salvador’s mega-prisons to Israel’s legal “black holes,” from mass incarceration in the US to Assad’s prison state in Syria, incarceration has become a mode of state warfare against civilians and dissidents. Lebanon, where prisons are molded by decades of colonial intervention, military occupations, and brutalizing state neglect, exemplifies this phenomenon. As war engulfs Lebanon once again, it becomes clear that carceral power extends far beyond prison walls – its violent effects reverberate, constraining and shaping conditions of survival at every turn. This project looks then to formerly incarcerated women to guide understandings both of the reach of carceral power and possibilities of living. Through life history interviews and other creative ethnographic methods, I seek not only to draw out carceral effects in the everyday but also to envision collaboratively a future beyond carceral warscapes.