Dr. Khattab’s research and teaching center on critical approaches to development, and formal and informal labor in the Arab World. Dr. Khattab previously researched civil Society in the sectarian context of Lebanon, the new unionism in Brazil, the landless peasants in Brazil, and independent unions in Egypt. Her current research is at the intersection of critical approaches to "development" in the Global South, intersectional approaches to poverty, precarity, and informality, labor movements, and labor organizing, solidarity networks, survival and resistance strategies by formal and informal workers under neoliberal and non-democratic regimes. She is currently researching women in the informal sector as well as fishermen in Tripoli in Northern Lebanon.