Ayah Kutmah

Ayah Kutmah is a Syrian writer and researcher with a focus on prisoners’ and human rights in the Middle East. She received her BA in Political Science and International Studies from the University of Michigan. Her honors thesis examined geospatial patterns of state repression and protest movement diffusion in the Middle East. Ayah was awarded the William Jennings Bryan Prize in Political Science and The Michigan Daily “Student of the Year.”

In 2017, Ayah co-founded [RE]vive, a refugee education initiative, and led workshops for Syrian refugees in Turkey and the United States. [RE]vive was awarded grants from the Kathryn Davis Project for Peace, optiMize, and the University of Michigan.

Ayah is the recipient of a 2020 U.S. Fulbright Scholarship to the occupied West Bank. She worked with Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, based in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), representing Palestinians incarcerated in the Israeli military judicial system. Ayah is also a former visiting researcher at the Muwatin Institute for Democracy and Human Rights at Birzeit University, where she studied carceral regimes and prisoners’ response in the oPt and Arab world.

Upon returning to the US, Ayah joined a defense team with the Military Commissions Defense Organization to represent a detainee held and charged before the US military commissions in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. She continues to consult for Guantánamo defense teams.

Ayah has written for The Nation, Middle East and North Africa Prison Forum, Institute for Palestine Studies, Inkstick, and Mondoweiss, among others.