New Faculty Fall 2023

Abhishek Majumdar

Associate Arts Professor of Theater

Abhishek Majumdar is a playwright, theatre director, and scenographer. He is the ex-artistic director and founder of two theatre companies, Indian Ensemble and Bhasha Centre for Performing Arts, both based out of Bangalore.

He has created work for and been commissioned by several theatres around the world including Ranga Shankara Bangalore, Prithvi Theatre Mumbai, Royal Court Theatre London, National Theatre London, Deutsche Shauspielhaus Hamburg, Deautsch Shauspielhaus Freiburg, Yale repertory theatre, Theatre Du Solleil (ARTA), Dhaka University, International Dramaturgy Festival Buenos Aires, PlayCo New York, Jana Natya Manch New Delhi to name a few.

He is the recipient of Charles Wallace India Trust Fellowship, Inlaks Fellowship, Shankar Nag Rangakarmi Award, Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Award, Hindu Metroplus playwright's award, and Toto fund the arts creative writing award.

MBA, National Institute of Technology, India

Previously: Visiting Associate Professor of Practice of Theater, NYU Abu Dhabi, UAE

Shaikha Al Mazrou

Assistant Arts Professor of Visual Arts

Shaikha Al Mazrou is an artist and an Assistant Arts Professor of Visual Arts. She received her Bachelor’s degree from the University of Sharjah (2010) an a Master’s from Chelsea College of Fine Art, University of the Arts, London (2014). Al Mazrou’s work has been shown in a number of exhibitions, including From Barcelona to Abu Dhabi, Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi (2017); The Art of Nature, Abu Dhabi Music & Arts Foundation (ADMAF) (2017); Homage without an Homage, Art Dubai (2017); Is Old Gold?, Dubai Community Theatre & Arts Centre (DUCTAC) (2017); Past Forward: Contemporary Art from the Emirates, Fowler Museum, University of California, Los Angeles (2015); 1st International Arezzo Biennial of Art, Italy (2013); 14th Asian Art Biennale Bangladesh (2010); 28th Annual Exhibition of the Emirates Fine Arts Society, Sharjah Art Museum (2010) and Sharjah Cultural Days, Museum of Modern Art, Passau, Germany (2010).

MFA, Chelsea College of Fine Art, University of the Arts, London, UK

Previously: Visiting Arts Professor of Visual Arts, NYU Abu Dhabi, UAE

Satnam Choongh

Clinical Professor of Legal Writing and Research

Satnam Choongh holds a First Class Honours Degree in Law from the University of Warwick, and a DPhil from Trinity College, Oxford. He was appointed Hardwicke Scholar and awarded the Thomas More Bursary by Lincoln's Inn in 1993, and called to the Bar of England Wales in 1994. He dual-qualified as a solicitor in 1998, but has remained as a practicing barrister for the last 30 years specializing in all aspects of Planning and Environmental Law. Satnam's research initially focused on criminal justice, in which he published widely (Policing as Social Discipline (OUP 1997); Improving Custodial Legal Advice (Law Society 1998); Ethnic Minority Defendants and the Right to Elect Jury Trial (Commission for Racial Equality 2000). Satnam was Socio-Legal Research Fellow at Warwick University, and has held Professorial Posts at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the University of Birmingham (where he was founder and Director of the Centre for Employability Professional Legal Education and Research).

DPhil, Trinity College, Oxford University, United Kingdom

Previously: Barrister, Number 5 Chambers, England

Manal AlMarzooqi

Lecturer of Arabic Language

Manal Al Marzooqi received a BA in Arabic Language and literature from the College of Arabic and Islamic Studies (2007), an MA in Arabic Linguistics and Syntax from the same College (2015), and a PhD in Arabic Linguistics and Syntax from the Alwasl University (2022).

Her Master thesis titled Multilingualism in the UAE: Lingual, social and educational study. And her PhD was about language interference between Arabic and English; Lingual and educational study.

Dr. Al Marzooqi’s research interests include Arabic Language, Classical Arabic, Linguistics, Arabic Syntax, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics.

PhD in Linguistic and Syntax of Arabic Language, AlWasl University, UAE

Previously: Visiting Lecturer of Arabic Language

Maruan Manaja

Lecturer of Film and New Media

Maruan Manaja is a filmmaker whose interest focuses on audio/visual storytelling, photography, and art. Manaja focuses on empowering young filmmakers technically to broaden their creative storytelling. Manaja studied Digital Media at TAFE NSW in 2007 and later completed an MFA course in filmmaking at the Red Sea Institute of Cinematic Arts – Jordan. Professionally, Manaja works as a technical instructor, a sound engineer, sound and picture editor, and a post-production supervisor in the film industry. Over the past few years, Manaja worked on several well-known short and feature films that gained a lot of attention in the MENA region, such as When Monaliza Smiled by Fadi G. Haddad and Mahbas (Solitaire) by Sophie Boutros. Some of the positions that he held on set include Sound Recordist, Boom Operator, Post Production Supervisor, Assistant Editor, and Assistant Cameraman. He is also a certified Avid Certified Media Composer instructor, the industry standard for film editing.

Bachelor of Communication, Swinburne University, Australia

Previously: Instructor of Arts, NYU Abu Dhabi, UAE

Carol Martin

Professor

Carol Martin is a Professor of Drama. Her books include Theatre of the Real and Dance Marathons: Performing American Culture of the 1920s and 1930s. She is the Editor of Dramaturgy of the Real on the World Stage, A Sourcebook of Feminist Theatre, and the co-editor with Henry Bial of Brecht Sourcebook. She is the Guest Editor of four special issues of TDR, “Reclaiming the Real” (2017), “Performing the City” (2015), “Documentary Theatre” (2006), and “Japanese Theatre: 1960s to the Present” (with Kurihara Nanako). Martin has been awarded a Visiting Professor Fellowship at Tokyo University, Komaba Graduate School of Arts and Science, two Fulbright awards, an NEH, a Mellon, a De La Torre Bueno Special Citation for Dance Marathons, Best Issue of the Year by the Professional/Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers, and travel and research grants from the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Trust for Mutual Understanding, and Tisch School of the Arts.

PhD, New York University, USA

Affiliated from: Professor, NYU, USA

Jiani Lian

Senior Language Lecturer of Chinese

Jiani Lian is a Senior Language Lecturer of Chinese at NYU Shanghai. She received her MA in Chinese from the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Before joining NYU Shanghai, Jiani worked for the Chinese language program of UMass Amherst from 2013-2015 and also for other language programs in China as a language instructor, such as the UVa in Shanghai program and the Alliance of Global Education in Beijing. At NYU Shanghai, she has taught across all levels with a specialization on Intermediate level (heritage and non-heritage) instruction and Classical Chinese.

MA in Chinese, University of Massachusetts, USA

Affiliated from: Senior Language Lecturer of Chinese, NYU Shanghai, China

Carmen Bugan

Visiting Assistant Professor, Literature & Creative Writing

Carmen Bugan is a poet and writer whose work explores the expressions of historical and political upheaval in literature. She is the author of nine books, including poetry, memoir, and criticism. Some of her work has been translated into Swedish, Polish, Italian, and Chinese. Her most recent book of essays on politics and poetics, Poetry and the Language of Oppression (Oxford University Press, 2021), dealt with Cold War surveillance and considered the wider perspectives of writing in turbulent times; it was named an "essential book for writers" by Poets and Writers. Her memoir, Burying the Typewriter: Childhood Under the Eye of the Secret Police (Picador/ Graywolf, 2012) was the Winner of the Bakeless Prize for Nonfiction, was shortlisted for the George Orwell Prize, and was serialized as the BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. Other grants and fellowships include a Hawthornden Fellowship and a large individual grant from the Arts Council England. Bugan was made a George Orwell Prize Fellow in 2017.

PhD in English Literature, Balliol College, Oxford University, United Kingdom

Visiting from: Adjunct Professor, English Department, Stony Brook University, USA

Aya Riad

Visiting Assistant Professor of Interactive Media

Aya Riad is the co-founder and chief architect of Shift+Space Design & Research; an experimental design studio positioned at the intersection of architecture, robotics, emergent technologies, and art. The studio's work dives into interactive, participatory design that begins from the person and expands to the surrounding environment. Currently, she is the Assistant Professor at Ajman University, and formerly served as an Assistant Lecturer of Advanced Computational Design at the American University in Cairo (AUC) and has a passion for teaching. She is also the Middle East Regional Manager at DigitalFUTURES; a global, educational, accessible initiative with a particular emphasis on the latest computational design and fabrication technologies.

She holds a Doctorate of Design from  Florida International University (FIU), and earned her Master’s degree (M. Arch. Design Research Lab) from the renowned Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, UK.

MArch in Design Research Lab, Architectural Association
School of Architecture, England

Visiting from: Assistant Lecturer of Advanced Computational Design, American University in Cairo, Egypt

Nimrah Syed

Visiting Lecturer of Interactive Media

Nimrah Syed is a designer, researcher and educator. She is currently an Adjunct Instructor at George Brown College and has over eight years of experience working in design and management. Her practice focuses on designing strategies for social change through design thinking practices.

Master in Design, Ontario College of Art & Design University, Canada

Visiting from: Adjunct Instructor, George Brown College, Canada

Dale Hudson

Associate Professor of Film and New Media

Dale Hudson is an author and educator currently serving as Associate Professor of Film and New Media at NYU Abu Dhabi. His research employs transnational and postcolonial frameworks to analyze media and is published in esteemed journals such as Afterimage, Cinema Journal, French Cultural Studies, and Screen, among others. His teaching and research encompass various fields, including film and visual culture in Southwest Asia (Middle East), North Africa, and South Asia (SWANASA [MENASA]), as well as postcolonial, environmental, and globalization studies, documentary studies, critical race, and critical animal studies.

Hudson earned his PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in May 2004. He also holds an MA in Liberal Studies and a New York State Certificate in Museum Studies from New York University. Additionally, he completed academic programs at Studio Art Centers International (Saci) in Florence, Italy.

Over the years, Hudson's roles at NYUAD have evolved, from Associate Teaching Professor and Curator of Film and New Media from 2013 to 2023, to Faculty Fellow in Film and New Media from 2010 to 2013. Hudson has moderated several thought-provoking discussions, such as "Connecting Worlds" in 2023 and "Between Skylines and Deserts" in 2022, highlighting the interplay between art, film, and societal dynamics. He actively engages with prominent filmmakers and artists, moderating masterclasses at the Sharjah Film Platform, chairing panels at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival, and co-moderating discussions at the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival in the USA, and participating in the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) Film Festival.

Hudson plays a vital role in curating art exhibitions and film series, with a particular focus on the Gulf region, in collaboration with the NYUAD Art Gallery and NYUAD Institute.

PhD in Comparative Literature, University of Massachusetts Amherst, United States of America

Previously: Associate Teaching Professor and Curator of Film and New Media, New York University Abu Dhabi

Murat Uysal

Professor of Electrical Engineering

Murat Uysal began his academic career as an Assistant Professor at the University of Waterloo, Canada in 2002 and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2007. In 2011, he joined Ozyegin University, Turkey where he served as the Department Chair of Electrical and Electronics Engineering and the Founding Director of Center of Excellence in Optical Wireless Communication Technologies (OKATEM). Uysal's research interests are in the broad area of communication theory with a particular emphasis on the physical layer aspects of wireless communication systems in radio and optical frequency bands. On these topics, he has authored some 400 journal and conference papers and received more than 20.000 citations with an h-index of 63. Uysal is an IEEE Fellow and the former Chair of IEEE Turkey Section. Uysal’s major distinctions include National Instruments Engineering Impact Award in 2017, Elginkan Foundation Technology Award in 2018, IEEE Communications Society Best Survey Paper Award in 2019 and IEEE Turkey Section Outstanding Service Award in 2021 among others.

PhD in Electrical Engineering, Texas A&M University, USA

Previously: Professor and Chair of the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Ozyegin University, Turkey.

Rita Sousa

Associate Professor of Civil and Urban Engineering

Rita Sousa was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Ocean Engineering at the Schaefer School of Engineering and Science, at Stevens Institute of Technology (Stevens). She is a Civil Engineer specialized in structural and geotechnical engineering, with degrees from the Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal, the École des Ponts ParisTech in Paris France and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Her research interests are Geomechanics, Stochastic subsurface characterization, Tunneling and Landslides. At Stevens Institute of Technology she has served as Faculty Advisory Council (FAC) Member, Civil Engineering Undergraduate Curriculum Committee Member, Civil Engineering Master student recruitment Member as well as Review Editor at the Board of Multi-criteria Decision Making (specialty section of Frontiers in Sustainability).

PhD in Geotechnical and Geo-environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA

Previously: Assistant Professor, Department of Civil, Environmental and Ocean Engineering, Stevens Institute of Technology, USA

Khaled Shahin

Clinical Associate Professor, Structural Engineering

Khaled Shahin is a Clinical Associate Professor, Structural Engineering at NYU Abu Dhabi, specializing in structural mechanics and fiber-reinforced polymer composite materials. Before joining NYUAD, Shahin served as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at Abu Dhabi University, UAE, and prior to that as a Senior Research Engineer at Lloyd’s Register - Martec Ltd. in Halifax, Canada. While at Lloyd’s Register, Shahin completed a two-year postdoctoral industrial R&D fellowship focusing on the reliability-based design of marine composite structures. This fellowship was funded in part by the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). His research interests include computational structural mechanics, fatigue and fracture mechanics of adhesively bonded joints, mechanics of fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) composites, and risk and reliability-based structural design methods.

PhD in Civil Engineering, Dalhousie University, Canada

Previously: Senior Lecturer of Civil and Urban Engineering, NYU Abu Dhabi, UAE

Pradeep George

Clinical Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering

Pradeep George is a mechanical engineer whose research focuses on computational modeling and optimization of various systems such as Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD), computing clusters, local-scale air quality (environmental system) and vocal folds (biomechanical system). George coordinates the Engineering Capstone Design Projects. 

PhD Rutgers University, USA

Previously: Senior Lecturer of Engineering, NYU Abu Dhabi, UAE

Debdeep Mukhopadhyay

Visiting Professor of Computer Engineering

Debdeep Mukhopadhyay is a cryptographer and a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering of the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. He was awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award for Science and Technology the highest science award in India, in 2021 for his contributions to micro-architectural security and cryptographic engineering. Debdeep Mukhopadhyay's research interests include Hardware security, Cryptographic Engineering, Design Automation of Cryptosystems, VLSI of Cryptosystems, and Cryptography. He has authored several textbooks, including Cryptography and network security , which has been cited 1227 times, according to Google Scholar. He was elevated to the Fellow of Indian National Academy of Engineers in 2021.

PhD in Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, India

Visiting from: Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, India

Mohamed Moustafa

Visiting Associate Professor of Civil and Urban Engineering

Mohamed Moustafa received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from UC Berkeley. Before joining the faculty at University of Nevada, Reno as an Assistant Professor, Moustafa did a short post-doctorate at UC Berkeley. He also obtained a Certificate in Engineering and Business for Sustainability from UC Berkeley and is a registered professional engineer in the state of California. Moustafa's academic training and background is mainly in structural and earthquake engineering. He has more than 12 years’ experience in mechanics and design of reinforced concrete structures, multi-scale experimental testing, structural and performance-based design for mitigating hazards, advanced monitoring techniques, and finite element and computational modeling with application to buildings, bridges, and electrical power equipment and infrastructure.

PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, USA

Visiting from: Associate Professor Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Nevada, USA

Keith Ross

Professor of Computer Science

Keith Ross currently does research in deep reinforcement learning and artificial intelligence. Previously he worked in other branches of computer science, including Internet privacy, modeling and measurement of computer networks, and Markov decision processes.

Professor Ross also holds affiliated appointments with NYU Tandon, NYU Courant Institute of Mathematical Science, NYU Center for Data Science, and NYU Shanghai. Before joining NYU Abu Dhabi, Professor Ross was Dean of Computer Science, Data Science and Engineering at NYU Shanghai from 2013 to 2023. At NYU Shanghai he was also Co-Director of the Center for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. He also previously held faculty positions at NYU Tandon/Polytechnic University (2003-2013), Institute Eurecom (1998-2003), and University of Pennsylvania (1985-1998).

He is an ACM Fellow and an IEEE Fellow. He is also the recipient of several prestigious best paper awards, and his work on Internet privacy was featured in the mainstream press, including The New York Times, NPR, and Bloomberg Television.

PhD in Computer and Control Engineering,The University of Michigan, USA

Previously: Dean of Computer Science, Data Science and Engineering, NYU Shanghai, China

Taoufik Hmidi

Professor of Mathematics

Taoufik Hmidi earned his PhD from Ecole Polytechnique Palaiseau. After that he held an Associate Professor position at the Université de Rennes. His research interests focus on exploring several aspects of geophysical flows, such as vortex dynamics and the emergence of relative equilibria in turbulent flows. He is also interested in the well posedness/blow up theory, incompressible and inviscid limits for several Nonlinear Partial Differential Equations.

PhD in Mathematics, Ecole Polytechnique Palaiseau, France

Previously: Visiting Associate Professor of Mathematics, NYU Abu Dhabi, UAE

Mostafa Sabri

Assistant Professor of Mathematics

Mostafa Sabri graduated from Cairo university in 2009, and conclude his Master degree and PhD in France (Paris 7 Denis-Diderot), under Anne Boutet de Monvel and Victor Chulaevsky, defending his thesis in 2014. He then became an Assistant Professor in Cairo in 2015. Sabri returned to France during 2016-2019 where he completed two post-doctorates, the first in Strasbourg with Nalini Anantharaman. The second at Orsay, with Stéphane Nonnenmacher. He returned to Cairo as Associate Professor in 2021. He later joined research associate at NYU Abu Dhabi campus under Dr. Pierre Youssef. His research interests are Spectral theory of (random) Schrödinger operators, Quantum chaos, Quantum ergodicity, Analysis on graphs and quantum graphs and Mathematical physics.

PhD in Mathematics, Universite Paris, France

Previously: Research Associate, NYU Abu Dhabi, UAE

Samer Aouad

Visiting Professor of Chemistry

Samer Aouad is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Balamand, His research is focused on trendy Chemical fields. He mainly works in the Renewable Energy (Catalytic Production of Hydrogen from Biofuels, Catalytic Reforming of Petroleum Derived Compounds, Catalytic Production of Syngas,…) and Pollution Characterization and Remediation (Catalytic Oxidation of Soot, Catalytic Oxidation of Volatile Organic Compounds,…) fields. Samer Aouad has published 57 scientific papers in catalysis, materials science and related subjects journals with impact factors reaching 16. He has also delivered more than 40 oral presentations and 40 poster presentations in different national and international conferences.

PhD in Chemical Sciences (Chemistry, Catalysis and Environment), Universite du Littoral, France

Visiting from: Professor of Chemical Sciences, University of Balamand, Lebanon

Fiona Newell

Visiting Professor of Psychology

Fiona Newell is Professor of Experimental Psychology (Personal Chair) and a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin. She is a graduate in Psychology from Trinity College Dublin and obtained her PhD from the University of Durham, UK. Newell is a former Fulbright Scholar, a Fellow of the Psychonomics Society and Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science.

Newell’s main research interests are in human perceptual processes. She leads the "Multisensory Perception and Cognition Group" at the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience. The broad goal of this research is to elucidate the brain and behavioral processes involved in the multisensory perception of the world around us, including faces, places and things. Newell's research is funded by a variety of national and international organizations including Science Foundation Ireland, the Health Research Board of Ireland and the European Commission. She is committed to public outreach, is a TEDx speaker and has curated or co-curated a number of exhibitions held in the Science Gallery Dublin and internationally.

PhD in Psychology, University of Durham, United Kingdom

Visiting from: Professor of Experimental Psychology, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

João Paulo Fernandes

Visiting Associate Professor of Computer Science

João Paulo Fernandes is a computer scientist passionate about addressing sustainability challenges within software development and usage and creating a greener, more eco-friendly future.
His research interests focus on optimizing the energy efficiency of software systems by providing information and tools for developers to build energy-efficient systems and for end users to adopt energy-efficient usage patterns. He has founded/coordinated and/or is involved in projects and initiatives such as GreenHub, Green Sw Lab, GreenHaskell, GreenStamp, and Sustrainable.
His scientific achievements have been described in over 75 publications in high-quality international conferences and journals such as IEEE TSE, EMSE, JSS, ICSME, SANER, EASE, and SLE, and include award-winning publications, e.g., the "Data Showcase Special Mention Award" at MSR'19. He has served on over 50 international conferences and journals program committees and was awarded the Outstanding Reviewer Award at SBES'19.

PhD in Informatics Minho University, Portugal

Visiting from: Associate Professor, Informatics Engineering Department, Porto University, Portugal

Mohamed Kassab

Visiting Associate Professor of Computer Science

Mohamad Kassab is an Associate Professor of Software Engineering within the Engineering Division and a member of the Graduate Faculty at The Pennsylvania State University . He received his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in computer science from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. Prior to The Pennsylvania State University, he was an affiliate Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering at Concordia University and a Postdoctoral researcher in software engineering at Ecole de Technologie Supérieure (ETS) in Montreal. His research projects have been carried out jointly with the industry and revolved around bridging the gap between software engineering practices and disruptive technologies (e.g., IoT, blockchain, AI). Mohamad Kassab is the main organizer of the four editions of the Workshop on Blockchain-Based Architectures (BlockArch) in conjunction with the IEEE ICSA Conference.

PhD in Computer Science, Concordia University, Canada

Visiting from: Associate Research Professor of Software Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, USA

Jennifer Sheehy-Skeffington

Visiting Associate Professor of Psychology

Jennifer Sheehy-Skeffington’s research investigates the consequences of adversity and economic inequality on cognitive functioning, self-regulation, and perceived control, with downstream consequences for decisions in domains of health, education, and finance. She also studies the psychological foundations of political attitudes including egalitarianism and populist sentiment, and is more recently looking at how ideologies such as neoliberalism shape self-construals and social relations. Her work has been published in journals including Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Sheehy-Skeffington is also an Associate Professor of Social Psychology at the at the London School of Economics, where she is affiliated with the International Inequalities Institute and Middle East Centre. Her PhD thesis won the Harvard University Herrnstein Prize in 2015 and was followed by the award of a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship. Sheehy-Skeffington is Associate Editor of the British Journal of Psychology and the European Journal of Social Psychology.

PhD in Psychology, Harvard University, USA

Visiting from: Associate Professor of Social Psychology, London School of Economics and Political Science, United Kingdom

Pavlos Eleftheriadis

Professor of Legal Studies

Pavlos Eleftheriadis comes to NYUAD from Mansfield College at the University of Oxford where he was a Professor of Public Law and a Fellow. He specializes in the philosophy of law, EU law, and public law. His research develops a moral theory of law and legal reasoning, which is both egalitarian and cosmopolitan. He is the author of Legal Rights (OUP, 2008) and A Union of Peoples: Europe as a Community of Principle (OUP, 2020) and of many essays in jurisprudence, including ‘Law and Sovereignty,’ ‘Cosmopolitan Law’ and ‘A Right to Health Care. He is the co-editor (with Julie Dickson) of Philosophical Foundations of EU Law (OUP, 2012). He has been an active commentator on European and constitutional affairs in the press. He practices as a barrister in European and human rights law from Francis Taylor Building in London.

PhD in Law, University of Cambridge, UK

Previously: Professor of Public Law, University of Oxford, UK

Anju Mary Paul

Professor of Social Research and Public Policy

Anju Mary Paul is an international migration scholar. Paul's research interests include emergent migration patterns, particularly to, from, and within Asia, gender and labor, globalization, domestic work, care policy, and science policy. She is the author of Multinational Maids: Stepwise Migration in a Global Labor Market (Cambridge University Press 2017) and Asian Scientists on the Move: Changing Science in a Changing Asia (Cambridge University Press 2021). She is also the editor of Local Encounters in a Global City (Ethos Books 2017). Her research has been published in top journals in sociology and migration studies, including the American Journal of Sociology; Social Forces; Migration Studies; the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies; Gender, Place & Culture; Global Networks; and Ethnic and Racial Studies. She is currently leading a transnational project, the Global Care Policy Index, which quantitatively scores countries on the degree of social and labor policy protections they provide unpaid family caregivers and paid domestic workers.

PhD, Sociology and Public Policy, University of Michigan, USA

Previously: Visiting Professor of Social Research and Public Policy, NYU Abu Dhabi

Raul Santaeulalia-Llopis

Associate Professor of Economics

Raül Santaeulàlia-Llopis' background is in quantitative macroeconomics, where the careful aggregation of individual behavior is essential. His research broadly focuses on economic growth and macro development. He is interested in inequality, intellectual property products and the macroeconomy Raul is also interested in the relationship between social insurance, resource (mis)allocation and economic growth; part of his work in progress includes a field project on Social Insurance and Economic Growth (SIEG) in Southern Malawi. Finally, he is also interested in the determinants of the HIV epidemic and how these shape (and are shaped by) economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa. Fourth, he is also interested in the development of tools for policy evaluation . Some of his work has been published in journals such as Econometrica; Journal of Public Economics; Journal of Development Economics; Journal of Monetary Economics; AEJ: Macro; Journal of Demographic Economics; Plos One; etc. Raul is a Beatriz Galindo Senior Research Professor in Economics at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB).

PhD in Economics, University of Pennsylvania, USA

Previously: Associate Professor, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB), Barcelona, Spain

Jingoo Kang

Associate Professor of Business, Organizations and Society

Jingoo Kang holds a PhD/MSc in Managerial Science and Applied Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He currently serves on the editorial review boards of Strategic Management Journal, Organization Science, and the Journal of International Business Studies.

PhD, Managerial Science and Applied Economics, University of Pennsylvania, USA

Previously: Associate Professor, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Rana Almutawa

Assistant Professor of Social Research and Public Policy

Rana Almutawa completed her doctoral training at the University of Oxford in 2021. Her thesis, which she is currently working on as a book project, is an urban ethnography of middle-class citizens and long-term residents in Dubai. It explores discourses of authenticity that circulate about “spectacular” cities such as Dubai and the forms of belonging and agency that take place in these settings. In particular, she is interested in interrogating the way narratives of certain geographies’ “(in)authenticity” and “superficiality” are often linked to performances of social distinction; in the forms of belonging taking place in “spectacular” spaces that are often dismissed as alienating; and in the intersectional forms of exclusion happening in these settings.

DPhil in Oriental Studies, University of Oxford, United Kingdom

Previously: Assistant Professor/Emerging Scholar, NYU Abu Dhabi, UAE

Wisam Alshaibi

Assistant Professor of Social Research and Public Policy

Wisam earned a PhD in sociology from UCLA and a BA in sociology from the University of Colorado, Boulder. He is a political, historical, and cultural sociologist. His research focuses on political violence, war, foreign policy, social theory, and the self. He has an area specialty in the modern middle east, especially modern Iraq. He explores how "big" events such as war, shifts in geopolitical strategy, and state behavior at the international level can be and often are driven by small groups of actors seeking power and recognition. His future research agenda explores questions about how political officials make sense of their participation in killing civilians and how distributed decision-making transforms moral questions into technical questions.  His research has been supported by the US Department of Education, the American Academic Research Institute in Iraq, the Hoover Institution, the Mellon Foundation, and the Forum Transregional Studied among other organizations. At UCLA, he was awarded the Peter Kollock Teaching Prize in the Department of Sociology, and the UCLA Distinguished Teacher Award, UCLA's highest honor for teaching across the entire university.

PhD in Sociology, University of California, USA

Previously: Research Assistant, University of California - Los Angeles, USA

Pauline Corblet

Assistant Professor of Economics

Pauline Corblet received her PhD in Economics from Sciences Po, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Luxembourg. Her research interests encompass matching theory, labor economics, education, and structural econometrics. Pauline's research has yielded noteworthy working papers, including Education expansion, Sorting, and the Decreasing Education Wage Premium, which received an 'Honorable Mention' Award at the 2022 IAAE Conference. Pauline has presented her work at various seminars and conferences, showcasing her expertise and insights in economics and related fields.

PhD, Economics, Sciences Po, France

Previously: Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg

Alaïs Martin-Baillon

Assistant Professor of Economics

Alaïs Martin-Baillon received her PhD in Economics from Sciences Po, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Copenhagen. Her research expertise lies in Macroeconomics, Monetary Economics, and Firm Dynamics. Alaïs' academic journey includes presentations at esteemed conferences and seminars, along with the honor of receiving fellowships such as the Banque de France/Sciences Po Fellowship. Alaïs remains poised to continue making impactful contributions to the realm of economics research and academia.

PhD in Economics, Sciences Po, France

Previously: Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Mustafa Yavas

Adjunct Lecturer

Mustafa Yavas is a sociologist focused on economic and political sociology with strong interests in inequality, work and occupations, immigration, social movements, and theory. He uses qualitative, comparative-historical, and computational methods, including in-depth interviews, social network analysis, computational text analysis, and agent-based modeling. His previous research focused on various boundary processes in social, economic, and political settings, including status homophily in social networks, residential segregation by income, and collective identity formation in social movements.

PhD, Sociology, Yale University, USA

Previously: Postdoctoral Associate, New York University Abu Dhabi, UAE