Merav is a leading scholar in the new and fast-developing field of Judaeo-Arabic studies. She is a historian musicologist, at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, the University of Cambridge, who specializes in the history, religion, culture, and music of the Jews who lived or have their origins in the Arab-Muslim world. Here, she explores all types of Arabic music prevalent among Jewish, Muslim and Christian societies, across and outside of the Middle East and focuses on the interaction of this music with issues of identity, nationalism, and Jewish-Christian-Muslim relations, in their wider historical, religious, political and cultural contexts.

Merav is currently leading a research project that documents and explores the Judaeo-Arabic history, music and culture of the Jews of Baghdad and Ḥalab (Aleppo) during the first half of the twentieth century, while focusing on the living memories of the last generation of Jews to live in these cities. She is also working with Professor Geoffrey Khan on a research project that explores the Jewish oral reading traditions of Biblical Hebrew. Additionally, Merav sits as a Trustee on the Board of The Cambridge Junction where she promotes values of coexistence through the arts.

She has been awarded numerous prizes and grants both in and outside of the UK, and she is often invited to give both academic and public lectures in the UK, Europe, the USA, and Israel. Prior to her academic career, Merav was a senior economist and a lecturer at the United Mizrahi Bank, Tel Aviv, for eleven years; a nationwide bursar of fifty musical conservatoires at the Israeli Ministry of Education, for three years; and an author of music programmes for schoolchildren, aimed at developing values of peace between Jews and Muslims in Israel.