Samar Zora, who was born in Kuwait but moved to Canada when she was five years old, moved back to Kuwait during her sophomore year of high school. At Duke, she was a fourth-year doctoral candidate in cultural anthropology and had been conducting research in Hatay Province, Turkey, when the Feb. 6 earthquakes hit Turkey and Syria, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Zora was also a graduate of McGill University’s Anthropology programme at the BA and MA levels, where friends and colleagues remember her fierce curiosity about the world and passion for anthropology.

Anyone who knew doctoral candidate Samar Zora deeply understood that she was an intellectual force to be reckoned with, with an ability to connect with people from all walks of life. “She was a teacher to all of us … we all learned something very different from her,” said one of Zora’s best friends, Demi Vrettas. “Being together with her friends is kind of like a mirror of all her pieces together.”

(From: https://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2023/03/duke-university-samar-zora-fourth-year-doctoral-candidate-cultural-anthropology-obituary-turkey-earthquake)