She worked at the Social Research Centre and participated in the first full-scale ethnographic project to study the way of life of the Nubians of Egypt prior to their government-sponsored relocation due to the building of the Aswan Dam.
Fadwa El Guindi, an Egyptian professor of anthropology, however argues that the jilbab and khimar worn today date only from the 1970s, when Egyptian women who belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood adopted them as Islamic dress.