Leila Zonouzi has a Ph.D. in Global Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her field of research is the modern Middle East, with a focus on transnational migration, political sociology, and civil society.

Her dissertation research is a comparative diasporic study between Iran, Egypt, and Turkey, where she looks at the new wave of academic migration from the Middle East and North Africa region to the Global North in the 21st century.

Her methods include field interviews, comparative historical analysis, and statistical analysis of economic and immigration data. Based on sources in Persian, Turkish, and Arabic, her scholarship explores the impacts of local and global sociopolitical and economic conditions on migratory networks. She has won a UC Presidential award to complete her dissertation.