Tom Abi Samra is a PhD candidate in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University and a visiting doctoral researcher at Freie Universität Berlin, supported by the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD). He is writing a dissertation about muʿāraḍa (competitive emulation) in premodern Arabic poetry. Broadly, his research interests include premodern and modern Arabic literature and culture, literary theory, and poetry and poetics. 

Tom Abi Samra holds an MA in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton; an MA in Comparative Literature from Dartmouth, where he wrote about ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī’s (d. 1143/1731) poetry and travelogues; and a BA in Literature from New York University Abu Dhabi, where he wrote about Yūsuf al-Shirbīnī’s (fl. 1097/1686) Hazz al-quḥūf.