On October 30th, 2014, my book on martial women in Arabic popular epic, The Warrior Women of Islam; Female Empowerment in Arabic Popular Literature (London: I.B. Tauris, 2014), received one of the runner-up prizes of the British-Kuwayt Friendship Society Book Prize 2014 during a ceremony at the Kuwayti Embassy in London.

I am currently preparing articles on the 14th-century author Ibn abi Hajala's work on chess, Unmudhaj al-qital fi naql al-`awal, and on the uses and popularity of the herb Habba Sawda', Nigella sativa, in the Muslim world in past and present.