Cultural and Research Engagement

The Office for Cultural and Research Engagement, will help advance NYUAD’s academic strategy by supporting the Provost and Deans in reaching out and fostering NYUAD’s societal impact and research connectivity. It provides artistic, cultural, and intellectual programming that is regionally relevant and globally recognized, and develop and collaborate on transformative initiatives in community engagement, as well as research excellence.

Nadia came to NYU Abu Dhabi from the American University of Beirut (AUB) in Lebanon, where she was the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and a Professor of History. Prior to the deanship at AUB, she held several academic leadership positions as Director of the Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies, Chair of the Department of History and Archaeology, and Interim Associate Provost.

Nadia has a distinguished academic career, holding a bachelor of arts degree in History and Archaeology from AUB and a PhD in History and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University. She is a highly accomplished scholar of the Abbasid Caliphate and Byzantium, with a focus on women, gender, and Islam. Nadia has published two monographs: Women, Islam and Abbasid Identity and Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs; and co-authored Crisis and Continuity at the Abbasid Court: Formal and Informal Politics in the Caliphate of al-Muqtadir. In 2019, she received a $1 million Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant for an oral history project, The Arab Oral History Archive: Gender, Alternative Histories, and the Production of Knowledge. Nadia has co-edited four volumes and contributed to several anthologies and journals.

Nadia is a highly regarded international speaker and has been visiting professor and scholar at Harvard, Columbia, University of California Los Angeles, Amherst College, and New York.

Key People