Heba is an American socio-legal scholar and legal ethnographer specializing in the intersections of law, social movements, and democratic backsliding. She serves as an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Criminology at Nebraska Wesleyan University. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the American University in Cairo, an LL.M. in International Human Rights Law from the University of York, and both a Master’s degree and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Before transitioning to full-time academia, Heba worked as a human rights researcher and organizer in Cairo, collaborating with grassroots movements focused on social and economic rights. This field-level experience informs her scholarly focus on Middle Eastern and North African politics, particularly post-revolutionary Egypt. Her research explores how legal frameworks and judicial processes are mobilized or weaponized to entrench autocratic rule from within, a dynamic she analyzes through concepts like legalism and counter-lawyering.
Her published work includes contributions such as “’This Country has Laws’: Legalism as a Tool of Entrenching Autocracy in Egypt” and chapters in comparative handbooks on contemporary political transitions. Her ethnographic and sociological approach illuminates how legal professionals and marginalized communities navigate or resist administrative control.