New Faculty Fall 2026
Academic Year 2026-2027
NYU Abu Dhabi leadership and faculty are researchers, scholars, and artists of extraordinary distinction within and beyond their disciplines, and at the same time exceptional teachers, dedicated to supporting and challenging their students and to transforming them into intellectual colleagues. In addition to a growing cohort of full-time faculty, the University also draws talent from across NYU’s global network and hosts visiting faculty from outstanding universities around the world.
Today NYU Abu Dhabi has a faculty of more than 300 experts who are drawn to the University by the quality and passion of our students, by a very favorable research environment, and, as importantly, by the institution’s resolve to contribute significantly to the region and to shape a better world through education and research.
Meet the New Faculty by Academic Unit
Aya Riad
Associate Arts Professor of Interactive Media
Aya Riad is a computational architect, design researcher, creative engineer, and educator. She is an Associate Arts Professor and Program Head of Interactive Media at NYU Abu Dhabi. She serves as Middle East Regional Manager at DigitalFUTURES. She holds a DDes from Florida International University, an MArch from the Architectural Association’s Design Research Lab, and a BSc in Architectural Engineering from the American University in Cairo.
Her creative practice and research span computational design, body architecture, 3D-printed wearables, digital fabrication, robotics, affective computing, and interactive systems, exploring relationships between the body, technology, materiality, and responsive environments. Her work, alongside student projects she has directed and mentored, has been presented at Ars Electronica, Dubai Design Week, Festival X, Sikka Art and Design Festival, Dubai Innovation Week, Al Qattara Arts Center, and Alserkal Avenue.
She has collaborated with DCT Abu Dhabi and Dubai Culture. Her recognitions include First Prize in the Architecture and Urbanism category of the 2022 Emirati Futurism Award and Autodesk’s Scriptathon Design Award.
Doctor of Design (DDes), Florida International University, USA
Previously: Visiting Assistant Professor of Interactive Media, NYU Abu Dhabi, UAE
Ahmed Y. AlMaazmi is Assistant Professor of History at New York University Abu Dhabi. He holds a Ph.D. (2025) and M.A. (2021) in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University and a B.A. with honors in International Studies from Zayed University.
His research examines the intersections of science, empire, law, and society across Arabia and the wider Indian Ocean world. His current book project, tentatively titled Enchanted Empire: Occult and Order in Early Modern Arabia, traces the production, regulation, and political uses of occult-scientific knowledge in the Yaʿrubī Empire. His publications include “Solomon’s Shadow” in Genealogical History in the Persianate World (2025), “I Authored This Book in the Absence of My Slave” in Monsoon (2024), and “The Apocalyptic Hijab” in Hawwa (2021). He has also translated five academic books into Arabic.
Before joining NYU Abu Dhabi, AlMaazmi served as Assistant Professor of History at United Arab Emirates University and worked in the heritage and tourism sectors in Sharjah and Abu Dhabi. His dissertation received the Gwenn Okruhlik Dissertation Award from the Association for Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies and an honorable mention from the World History Association. His distinctions also include a Fulbright Fellowship and Princeton’s Culture, Society, and Religion Graduate Research Fellowship.
PhD in Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University, USA
Previously: Assistant Professor of History, United Arab Emirates University, UAE
Manthia Diawara
Professor
Manthia Diawara is a distinguished scholar, filmmaker, cultural theorist, and writer whose work explores African and African diasporic culture, cinema, politics, and globalization.
He is Professor of Comparative Literature and Cinema Studies at New York University and has held leadership roles within NYU’s Institute of African American Affairs. Born in Mali and educated in France and the United States, Diawara earned his PhD from Indiana University. His scholarship has made significant contributions to the fields of Black cultural studies, African cinema, and postcolonial studies. Alongside his academic work, he is an internationally recognized filmmaker whose documentaries examine questions of identity, migration, memory, art, and contemporary African life.
His films include An Opera of the World, Negritude: A Dialogue Between Wole Soyinka and Léopold Senghor, and AI: African Intelligence. Diawara is also the author of several influential books and essays, including In Search of Africa and We Won’t Budge. Through his interdisciplinary practice, he brings together critical scholarship, filmmaking, and cultural commentary to examine Africa’s evolving relationship with the wider world and contemporary global debates.
PhD in Comparative Literature, Indiana University, USA
Affiliated from: University Professor, New York University, USA
Salwa Mikdadi is Professor of Practice of Art History at NYU Abu Dhabi and the founding Director and Principal Investigator of al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art.
A leading scholar, curator, and historian of modern and contemporary Arab art, her research spans more than fifty years, focusing on Arab art institutions, gender politics, archives, and the relationship between museums and society. Through al Mawrid, founded in 2020, Mikdadi has led the development of the Arab Art Archive, preserving and providing access to significant primary-source materials on modern art across the Arab world.
Her curatorial work includes the first Palestinian collateral exhibition at the Venice Biennial in 2009 and Forces of Change: Artists of the Arab World. Her pioneering contribution to the field has received significant recognition. The Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran and Turkey established the Salwa Mikdadi Research Award in her honor.
Al Mawrid also received the Al Suwaidi Foundation Award for Appreciation and Cultural Cooperation, recognizing Mikdadi’s leadership and the Center’s contribution to Arab arts, culture, heritage, and scholarship.
MA in Museum Studies, John F. Kennedy University, USA
Previously: Associate Professor of Practice of Art History, NYU Abu Dhabi, UAE
Stephanie Rosenthal
Visiting Professor of Curatorial Studies
Stephanie Rosenthal is an internationally recognized curator, art historian, and museum director, currently serving as Director of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Project, a position she has held since 2022. She oversees the museum’s artistic vision and development as a global platform for modern and contemporary art rooted in the region.
Prior to joining Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, Rosenthal was Director of the Gropius Bau in Berlin from 2018 to 2022, where she expanded its international contemporary art program and established new artist-led and interdisciplinary initiatives. From 2007 to 2017, she served as Chief Curator at the Hayward Gallery in London and previously worked as a curator at Haus der Kunst in Munich. She was Artistic Director of the 20th Biennale of Sydney in 2016 and chaired the jury of the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019. Rosenthal holds a doctorate in art history from the University of Cologne. Her curatorial practice focuses on contemporary art, performance, participatory practices, and transcultural approaches.
PhD in Art History, University of Cologne, Germany
Visiting from: Director, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Project, UAE
Francesco Freddolini
Visiting Associate Professor of Early Modern European Art History
Francesco Freddolini is an art historian specializing in early modern art, with particular interests in sculpture, material culture, collecting, artistic mobility, and transcultural exchange. He has published extensively on Baroque sculpture, and on the history of collecting and display in early modern Rome and Florence. More recently, Freddolini has focused on global early modern artistic exchanges, with a series of publications including edited volumes on relations between Grand-Ducal Tuscany and the Eurasian context and between Rome and the global world. In 2025, he co-curated, with Francesca Cappelletti, the major exhibition Global Baroque: The World in Rome in the Age of Bernini at the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome (April 4 –July 13, 2025) and co-edited the accompanying catalogue.
Prior to joining NYUAD, Freddolini taught Art History at Luther College, University of Regina, Canada, and at Sapienza University, Rome, Italy. From 2019 to 2020, he served as Director of the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Regina, Canada.
PhD in History of Art, University of Pisa, Italy
Visiting from: Associate Professor of Early Modern Art History and Program Director, Art History Undergraduate Program, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
Annalisa Raho
Visiting Assistant Professor of Practice of Visual Communication and Design
Annalisa Raho is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Practice of Visual Communication and Design at NYU Abu Dhabi.
Raho is a designer, educator, and researcher whose work explores visual communication through the lenses of social change and sustainability. As CEO and Art Director of AR/Design, a visual communication practice operating in Italy and Canada, she has collaborated with publishers, museums, theaters, nonprofit organizations, private companies, and public institutions, creating visual identities, communication campaigns, editorial design, and digital platforms.
Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Saskatchewan Film Cooperative and DINA Gallery (UK), and has been featured in The New York Times. In 2020, she was selected as one of ten finalists for the IDA International Design Awards COVID-19 Design Innovation Grant.
Raho’s research focuses on design for social change and data visualization in communicating complex information across analog and digital environments. Before joining NYU Abu Dhabi, she taught Visual Communication at the University of Regina, Canada. Her teaching combines studio practice with critical dialogue, collaboration, and real-world engagement.
Master of Education, Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze, Italy
Visiting from: CEO and Communication Strategist, AR Communication, Italy
Chloe Bordewich is Visiting Assistant Professor of Public History at NYU Abu Dhabi. She holds a PhD in History and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University and an AB in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton.
Bordewich is a historian of media, migration, and empire in the modern Middle East with a strong interest in global public humanities. Her research focuses on the circulation of news, leaks, and rumor, and on the relationship between surveillance and social (dis)trust. Her current book, Facts or Fakes?: Empire, Authoritarianism, and the Struggle for Information Justice in Modern Egypt, traces the emergence of a public “right to know” among journalists, lawyers, and anticolonial activists in 19th- and 20th-century Egypt. She is also author of a bilingual (Arabic/English) play, Paradise Expressway.
Bordewich held postdoctoral fellowships at the U.S. National Archives (with Boston University) and the University of Toronto’s Jackman Humanities Institute. She is also co-founder of the Boston Little Syria Project (www.bostonlittlesyria.org). Her work has been supported by the Social Science Research Council, Orient-Institut Istanbul, the American Research Institute in Turkey, the Leventhal Map and Education Center, the Mellon Foundation, and various fellowships at Harvard University.
PhD in History and Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University, USA
Visiting from: Postdoctoral Fellow in New Media and Public Humanities, University of Toronto, Canada
Manuel F. Contreras is a Colombian documentary filmmaker, producer, researcher, and educator whose work explores visual representation and storytelling in documentary cinema. He holds a PhD in Arts from the Hungarian University of Fine Arts and a master’s degree from DocNomads, the international documentary filmmaking program. His professional experience spans independent film production, television, film programming, and higher education.
Contreras’ first feature-length documentary, Las Últimas Vacaciones (Boys of Buenaventura), received recognition at international film festivals. Alongside his filmmaking practice, he has held several roles within the international documentary community, including Head of Programming for the Budapest International Documentary Film Festival (BIDF) and lead programmer for the Déli-Doku Contemporary Latin American Documentary Film Festival in Budapest.As an educator, Contreras has taught documentary filmmaking through DocNomads at the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest and at Budapest Metropolitan University. His work brings together filmmaking, research, programming, and education, reflecting a sustained interest in documentary practice and the ways cinema represents people, places, and lived experiences.
PhD (DLA) in Arts, Hungarian University of Fine Arts, Hungary
Visiting from: Senior Lecturer of Applied Media, Higher Colleges of Technology, UAE
Sara Musaifer
Visiting Assistant Professor of Gender Studies
Sara Musaifer is a scholar of education whose research examines the intersections of education, citizenship, gender, race, language, and colonialism, with a particular focus on Bahrain and the Arab Gulf.
She holds a PhD in Comparative and International Development Education and a Master of Public Policy from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, and a BA in Political Science from the University of Jordan.
At NYU Abu Dhabi, Musaifer previously served as Visiting Lecturer of Social Research and Public Policy and as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Social Research and Public Policy Program. Her scholarship explores nation-building, citizenship education, sociolinguistics, girls’ education, and the enduring influence of colonialism on educational institutions and practices. Her research has been published in Postcolonial Directions in Education and the International Journal of Middle East Studies. She is also a Fulbright Graduate Fellow and recipient of the Comparative and International Education Society’s Middle East Special Interest Group Student Paper Award.
Beyond academia, Musaifer has held research and policy roles with the Brookings Institution, Bahrain Institute for Political Development, and Minnesota Department of Education.
PhD in Comparative and International Development Education, University of Minnesota–Twin Cities, USA
Previously: Visiting Lecturer of Social Research and Public Policy, NYU Abu Dhabi, UAE
Anton Vereschagin
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Interactive Media
Anton Vereshchagin is a game and animation director, artist, and writer who has worked in games, CG, and animation since 2002. His work spans feature film, animated shows, games, and commercials, formats that each demand a different production approach and a different artistic voice. He graduated with honors from Saint Petersburg State University of Film and Television.
As director and showrunner of animated series including JingleKids, he received the Magnolia Award for Best Animation and Best Storytelling at the Shanghai Television Festival (2017), in a field that included work from Cartoon Network, Canal+, and the Academy Award–nominated Revolting Rhymes (BBC). The series has also been nominated for the Japan Prize for Best Educational Media for Preschool Children, and has won Best 3D Graphics at the Multimir industry awards, Best Animated Series at the San Diego International Kids' Film Festival, and the Open Premiere Grand Prix at the Suzdal Open Russian Animation Festival. His series have been translated into more than 30 languages and stream on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, and CCTV, among other platforms. Vereshchagin game credits include Blitzkrieg, Heroes of Might and Magic, TimeShift, and One State, among others. He has contributed to the development of production pipelines and tooling for animation studios, and has personally designed more than 400 characters for animation and video games. He is the author of the children's book series Time of Legends: Film Fairytales. Vereshchagin has taught at industry universities in Russia since 2005, training a generation of professionals now working in studios worldwide.
MFA in Animation and CG Directing, Saint Petersburg State University of Film and Television, Russia
Visiting from: Chief Creative Officer / Animation and Art Director, GAAMEON Studios, UAE and India
Anna Kurkova is a multidisciplinary artist and educator whose creative practice spans sculptural installation, printmaking, painting, and drawing. Her work explores the relationships between sacred and public spaces, urban landscapes, and natural ecosystems, examining how these environments intersect and shape experiences of place and belonging. Kurkova holds a BA in Visual Arts from NYU Abu Dhabi and an MA in Art History and Museum Management from Sorbonne University. She subsequently pursued an MFA in Painting at University College London, further developing her studio practice and artistic research.
Kurkova is the recipient of the 2017 Christo and Jeanne-Claude Award and has exhibited her work at galleries and cultural venues across the UAE. Prior to pursuing her MFA, she served as Associate Instructor of Arts in Mixed Media at NYU Abu Dhabi, where she supported teaching and research within the Art and Art History program. She also managed the Mixed Media Art, Printmaking, and Darkroom studios, as well as the Cube exhibition platform. Her interdisciplinary practice brings together material experimentation, spatial inquiry, and sustained engagement with the evolving relationship between built and natural environments.
MFA in Painting, University College London, UK
Previously: Associate Instructor of Arts in Mixed Media, NYU Abu Dhabi, UAE
Jiahao Yu is an Assistant Professor of Computer Engineering at New York University Abu Dhabi. He received his PhD in Computer Science from Northwestern University and his bachelor’s degree from Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
His research addresses the security and trustworthiness of artificial intelligence systems, spanning adversarial machine learning, large language model (LLM) red-teaming, and AI-driven software security and evaluation. His work includes GPTFuzzer, an automated framework for red-teaming LLMs that has been integrated into Microsoft’s PyRIT toolkit, together with research on prompt-injection fuzzing, retrieval-augmented generation poisoning, and automated vulnerability discovery and repair. His research appears at leading venues, including USENIX Security, ICSE, ICML, and NeurIPS.
At NYU Abu Dhabi, Yu is the Principal Investigator of the Secure Reasoning Lab (SRL). He has contributed to DARPA’s AI Cyber Challenge (AIxCC) as a member of Team 42-b3yond-6ug.
PhD in Computer Science, Northwestern University, USA
Previously: PhD Candidate, Northwestern University, USA
Julian Barreiro-Gomez is an engineer and researcher specializing in optimal control, dynamic games, machine learning, and multi-agent systems. He earned his MSc in Electrical Engineering and PhD in Engineering from Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, and a PhD, cum laude, in Automatic Control, Robotics and Computer Vision from Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain.
He is the author of The Role of Population Games in the Design of Optimization-Based Controllers: A Large-scale Insight, published by Springer in 2019, and co-author of Mean-Field-Type Games for Engineers, published by CRC Press in 2021.
His research has received several international distinctions, including the 2017 Best PhD Thesis in Control Engineering Award from the Spanish National Committee of Automatic Control and Springer, and the European Embedded Control Institute’s award for Best PhD Thesis in Europe in Control for Complex and Heterogeneous Systems. He also received the 2018 ISA Transactions Best Paper Award for his research on model predictive control and population games. Barreiro-Gomez has been a Senior Member of IEEE since 2018.
PhD in Automatic Control, Robotics & Computer Vision, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Spain
Previously: Assistant Professor, Khalifa University Abu Dhabi, UAE
Hassan Sajjad is a computer scientist specializing in Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing. He is a Visiting Associate Professor at NYU Abu Dhabi, a Full Professor at Dalhousie University, and Director of the HyperMatrix Research Lab. His research focuses on developing safe, reliable, and trustworthy AI, with particular emphasis on AI safety, representation learning, interpretability, and evaluation. His broader research interests include machine translation, language generation, and natural language processing for low-resource languages.
Sajjad’s research has been published at leading international venues, including NeurIPS, ICML, and ACL, and has been featured by prominent research and technology outlets, including MIT News. He is actively engaged in the international AI and NLP research community as a speaker, organizer, area chair, and reviewer, and has delivered more than 50 talks, including keynote presentations. He has also developed widely adopted research tools, including NeuroX, a toolkit for interpreting neurons in neural networks. His work on dialectal machine translation has achieved significant real-world impact, supporting the translation of billions of words worldwide across diverse applications and communities.
PhD in Computer Science, University of Stuttgart, Germany
Visiting From: Associate Professor, Faculty of Computer Science, Dalhousie University, Canada
Mohamad Kassab is a computer scientist and software engineering scholar specializing in requirements engineering, software architecture, software quality, artificial intelligence, blockchain, and the Internet of Things. He holds a PhD and MS in Computer Science from Concordia University in Canada, alongside degrees in computer science and computer engineering.
Kassab is currently Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Boston University, where he also directs the Online MS in Software Engineering for Artificial Intelligence. He returns to NYU Abu Dhabi as a Visiting Associate Professor, having previously held a visiting faculty appointment at NYUAD from 2023 to 2025. Prior to joining Boston University, he spent more than a decade at Pennsylvania State University in software engineering faculty and research roles.
His research bridges software engineering and emerging technologies, examining how AI, blockchain, and IoT can be designed, tested, and integrated into complex systems. He has authored and co-authored several books, including Requirements Engineering for Software and Systems and What Every Engineer Should Know About the Internet of Things, and brings extensive academic and industry experience to his research and teaching.
PhD in Computer Science, Concordia University, Canada
Visiting from: Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Boston University, USA
Leonardo Barilaro
Visiting Associate Professor of Space Technology and Sonic Arts, Artist-in-Residence
Leonardo Barilaro is a transdisciplinary researcher, aerospace engineer, musician, and educator known as the “Space Pianist” for integrating space science with contemporary music and sonic arts. He is Visiting Associate Professor of Space Technology and Sonic Arts at NYU Abu Dhabi, where he leads the NYUAD Space Art Lab. He holds a PhD in Science, Technology, and Measurements for Space from the University of Padua and a Master of Music in Piano from the Conservatory of Music “C. Pollini” in Italy.
His research focuses on sustainable space technologies, including space debris mitigation, hypervelocity impacts, spacecraft repair, and satellite shielding. As Principal Investigator of the ASTROBEAT project, he tested an innovative cold-welding adhesion technique aboard the International Space Station. He has authored more than 30 academic publications and previously held research and academic positions in Italy and Malta. Alongside his scientific work, Barilaro has had original musical compositions broadcast from space three times and recorded *Zero Gravity, Note One* during a parabolic flight, combining artistic experimentation with aerospace research to explore new approaches to space sustainability and communication.
PhD in Science, Technology and Measurements for Space, University of Padua, Italy
Visiting from: Senior Lecturer in Aerospace Engineering, Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology (MCAST), Malta
Weiye (Rex) Deng
Assistant Professor of Political Science
Weiye (Rex) Deng is a political scientist whose research lies at the intersection of comparative politics, political communication, political psychology, and international relations, with a particular focus on China and authoritarian politics. He holds a PhD in Political Science from Washington University in St. Louis, where his doctoral research examined how governments respond to and shape negative public opinion. His work draws on computational methods, surveys, and experiments to study propaganda, political persuasion, public opinion, and international cooperation.
Deng’s research has received recognition from several leading political science associations. His work on entertainment and political compliance in autocracies received the Timothy E. Cook Best Graduate Student Paper Award and the Rebecca Morton Poster Award and was supported by an APSA Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant. He has also received the APSA Foreign Policy Section Best Paper Award and several competitive research grants and fellowships. His broader research explores cultural diplomacy, crisis communication, political extremism, and state-led development, examining how information, narratives, and political institutions shape citizens’ attitudes toward governments and influence perceptions of international relations.
PhD in Political Science, Washington University in St. Louis, USA
Previously: Ph.D. Candidate, Washington University in St. Louis, Department of Political Science
Mikhail Panov
Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics
Mikhail Panov is an economist specializing in microeconomics, game theory, and bargaining. He joins NYU Abu Dhabi as a visiting faculty member. He holds a PhD in Business Administration from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, an MA in Economics from the New Economic School, and an MSc in Mathematics from Moscow State University.
His research examines strategic interaction and decision-making, with particular interests in bargaining, cooperation, dynamic and continuous-time games, and informationally complex environments. His published work includes “Strategic Trading in Informationally Complex Environments,” co-authored with Nicolas Lambert and Michael Ostrovsky and published in Econometrica. His current research explores cooperation, agreements in continuous-time games, dynamic games, bounded rationality, bargaining and coordination, and reputation.
Prior to joining NYU Abu Dhabi, Panov served as Assistant Professor of Economics at the Higher School of Economics in Saint Petersburg from 2019 to 2025. Previously, he was Assistant Professor of Economics at New York University from 2015 to 2019. His teaching experience spans game theory, microeconomics, finance, and continuous-time games at undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral levels.
PhD in Business Administration, Stanford University, USA
Visiting from: Assistant Professor of Economics, Higher School of Economics (Saint Petersburg) Department of Economics, Russia
Davide Carpano is an economic and historical sociologist specializing in science and technology studies. He earned his PhD in Sociology and Science Studies at UC San Diego. Carpano’s research focuses on investigating the disconnect between the liberatory and utopian promises that have accompanied the spread of computers and the Internet and the realities of their application within contemporary digital capitalism.
His dissertation investigated the corporate adoption of free and open-source software through a case study of IBM’s adoption of the Linux operating system in the late 1990s. His co-authored paper, “Chromium as a Tool of Logistical Power: A Material Political Economy of Open-Source,” was published in Big Data & Society and received an honorable mention for the American Sociological Association’s Hacker-Mullins Student Paper Award.
Carpano’s research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and UC San Diego. He was previously an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Technology, Culture, and Society at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering, where he taught courses on the history and philosophy of technology.
PhD in Sociology (Science Studies), University of California San Diego, USA
Visiting from: Adjunct Faculty, New York University Tandon School of Engineering, Department of Technology, Culture and Society, USA
Folker De Witte is a legal scholar specializing in financial market and business regulation, with research interests in sustainable finance, corporate social responsibility, environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues, and financial market regulation. He is a Visiting Lecturer for Legal Studies at NYU Abu Dhabi, where he previously served as an Adjunct Lecturer in the Business, Organizations and Society major within the Social Science Division.
De Witte holds a PhD in Law from the European University Institute, where his doctoral research examined European Union disclosure regulation for retail investment products. He also holds an LLM in Comparative, European and International Law from the European University Institute, an LLM in Legal Research from the University of Groningen, and an LLB in Law from Utrecht University.
Prior to joining NYU Abu Dhabi, De Witte worked as a Policy Advisor in the Financial Markets Policy Directorate at the Dutch Ministry of Finance, where he was a member of the Sustainable Finance Expert Group. He also served as a Teaching Associate at the Florence School of Banking and Finance, bringing together legal scholarship, financial policy experience, and teaching.
PhD in European and International Law, European University Institute, Italy
Previously: Adjunct Lecturer of the Business, Organizations and Society Major, NYU Abu Dhabi, UAE
Saleena Saleem is a political sociologist specializing in Asia, with research at the intersection of race, religion, gender, politics, and society. She holds a PhD from the University of Liverpool, an MS in Political Science from MIT, a master’s in Business and Economics Journalism from Boston University, and a bachelor’s in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Boston University. Her research examines social trust, political polarization, identity-based divisions, religious nationalism, and the governance of diversity in multiracial and multireligious societies.
Saleem is currently developing a monograph, Unity in Diversity: Navigating Faith and Secularism in Southeast Asia, examining how secular and religious women’s civil society groups build trust and cooperation amid political polarization. Her research has appeared in Religion, State and Society, Sociology of Islam, Asia Maior, and Global Policy. Previously, she was Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology at Boston University and a Research Affiliate at its Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs. She has also held research positions at Nanyang Technological University and the National University of Singapore.
PhD in Sociology, University of Liverpool, UK
Visiting from: Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and Research Affiliate, Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University, USA