NYUAD Institute

The New York University Abu Dhabi Institute is an interdisciplinary center for advanced research, artistic creativity, and public outreach. The Institute sponsors, curates, and coordinates research conferences, workshops, lectures, film series, exhibitions, and performances that address issues relevant to Abu Dhabi, the region, and the world. 

In its location on the NYUAD campus adjacent to the Saadiyat Island Cultural District, the Institute provides an intellectual forum for public talks, dedicated conference spaces, research labs, and workspace for visiting scholars. The Institute brings together faculty, academic researchers, and students from the region and the world, and encourages learning, collaboration, and innovation. 

The NYUAD Institute strengthens intellectual and programmatic links between NYU Abu Dhabi and NYU's renowned graduate and professional schools and research initiatives. At its 19 Washington Square North location, the Institute hosts public events and conferences in New York City.

As the Senior Director of the NYUAD Institute, she oversees a wide range of public lectures and academic conferences and spearheads strategic initiatives. Her recent scholarship centers on twentieth- and twenty-first-century cultural production from the Middle East, with a particular focus on the relationship between aesthetics and politics in literary and visual arts, and on the theory, practice, and impact of translation on 20th-century Arab cultural thought.

Maya Kesrouany is also an Associate Professor of Modern Arabic Literature at NYUAD.

Over the course of her academic career, Kesrouany has taught courses in Arabic and postcolonial literature, political philosophy and cultural studies, translation in a comparative framework, and Middle Eastern studies. At NYU Abu Dhabi, Kesrouany teaches courses such as “Introduction to Modern Arabic Literature” and “Revolution and Social Change.”

Kesrouany’s book, titled Prophetic Translation: The Promise of European Literature in the Egyptian Imaginary, was published by Edinburgh University Press in January 2019. The book explores translations of French and British literature and philosophy into Arabic around the turn of the 20th century and their impact on modern Arabic narrative and thought. Other publications deal more specifically with the translation and teaching of Arabic literature, the history of criticism, and the role of the public intellectual in the Arab world today. She has two current book projects: the first, titled Privilege Not Rights: Arab Women’s Literary Activism in the 20th Century, writes the history of the Arab female intellectual. The second — Conversions with No Endings: Aesthetics and Politics in the Arab World — explores visual and cultural manifestos in Egypt and Lebanon from the 1940s to the present.

Key People