Randa Serhan is a political sociologist and ethnographer who studies ethnic minorities, urban sociology and questions of citizenship.

Currently, Randa is a Term Associate Professor of Sociology at Barnard College. She is also research affiliate with the Palestine Land Studies Center at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. Prior that this, Randa was assistant professor in Sociology at American University in Washington, DC where she founded and served as director of the Arab World Studies program. She received her Ph.D. at Columbia University working under the supervision of Charles Tilly (until his passing), Herbert Gans, and Gil Eyal where she conducted ethnographic research on second generation Palestinian-Americans in metropolitan New York.

Her research trajectory began with questions about the place of women in the Lebanese legal system and the silencing of victims of “honor crimes,” it was followed by research on Palestinian refugees living in the camps in Lebanon before she undertook a longitudinal ethnographic study of Palestinian Americans in New York and New Jersey with a focus on the second generation (those born and raised in the United States). The latter culminated into her book titled, Assimilation Suspended: The Making of Palestinian Americans, which is currently under contract with Stanford University Press. Her second book contract is with Academica Press for Neither Thugs nor Terrorists: Black-Palestinian Solidarity Movements in the United States. The question of managing stigmatized or excluded identities cuts across all of her work as she traces mechanisms of self-representation and boundary-making among groups who are often targeted by more powerful forces and institutions.  

Randa was born in Beirut, Lebanon and raised between Kuwait with a brief stint in Washington, DC during elementary school. After the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, her family relocated to Beirut, Lebanon where she attended the American University of Beirut. She graduated in 1994 with High Distinction from the College of Arts and Sciences. This was followed by an MA from the University of Windsor in Canada in criminology and sociology. She decided to return to Beirut once again in hopes of serving refugees by working with the Norwegian People's Aid while also teaching at the American University of Beirut. 

In 2001, she enrolled at the New School for Social Research in New York City and completed a year before transferring to Columbia University where she completed her PhD in 2009. 

The daughter of a sociology professor, Randa was both comfortable with frequent moves and had a love for the craft and the ideas long before she decided to become a sociologist.