Dona works at the Royal Film Commission, having previously studied philosophy and literature. She is interested in the intersection of French theory and European film, and will be curating a film series on the history of cinema. Her research revolves around Western and Islamic philosophy at the turn of the first millennium. She is currently working on a collection of short stories.

Aesthetic Theory '16 - Ethics and Exile '17 - writer/prisoner '19

Tariq Adely is a translator and journalist. He graduated from Brown University in 2014 with a BA in Comparative Literature, focusing on translation of contemporary Spanish and Latin American poetry. He is interested in performative speech, semiotics, and theories of translation. Looking forward, he hopes to introduce works of Arabic literature to English-speaking audiences.

Islam and Critical Theory '16 - Ethics and Exile '17 - Kafka Goes to Palestine '18 - writer/prisoner '19

Sufian is an art historian and web developer. He works at the online platform 7iber.com, as well as in his own consultancy, in the field of web development. Through various venues, academic and otherwise, he has created innovative projects on the history, architecture, and society of the Islamicate and Arab world.

Identity Politics '16 - Islam and Critical Theory '16

Wafiqa is an Arabic language instructor at Sijal Institute in Amman, having received degrees in Literature and Cultural Studies from the Hashemite University. She is intererested in psychoanalysis, literary criticism, and the work of Franz Kafka. In January of 2018, she will begin a masters degree in English literature at the University of Liverpool.

Psychoanalysis '16 - Aesthetic Theory '16

Mona is an interdisciplinary artist based in Canada. Her practice involves navigating voids in personal and collective identity, memory, loss/modes of mourning, legacy, nationalism, and estrangement. At the Institute and through other venues in Amman, she has sought to reconcile the notion of belonging in a third space, not that of ancestors, birthplace, or current place of being, but a mobile centre that has no physical space.

Ethics and Exile '17

Omar works at the Sijal Institute for Arabic Language and Culture, where he administers and teaches courses in Arabic to students who possess a foreign language. A graduate of the American University in Beirut, he is currently completing a historical novel in Arabic on a Lebanese political faction in the 1980s. When the opportunity arises, he applies his professional voice-over skills on Arabic specials for Al-Jazeera and National Geographic.

Aesthetic Theory '16 - Social Science '18 - writer/prisoner '19

Oumeima graduated from the Arab Open University with a master's degree in English Literature. Her dissertation was a comparative analysis of Pablo Nerudo and Mahmoud Darwish, with a particular focus on their respective constructions of national identity in poetry. She has worked as an English teacher in Qatar and now spends her time researching Palestinian literature in preparation for a PhD.

Literature and Critical Theory '16 - Islam and Critical Theory '16

Yvonne is an artist and arts educator based in Cairo. She has exhibited artwork internationally and been involved in developing several educational programs in the UK and the Arab world, including the Cairo Institute for the Liberal Arts and Sciences and Amman's Spring Sessions.

Ethics and Exile '17

Ismael is a doctoral candidate at Ca' Foscari University of Venice in Italy. His current research in Amman combines methods from literary geography and sociology of literature.

writer/prisoner '19

Jessica is an archivist and graduate student at SOAS. She received her BA from the University of Cambridge, where her dissertation explored the fate of a seminal piece of modern architecture in Beirut. In Amman, she has interned at the Khalid Shoman Foundation and ACOR. She is particularly interested in the history and practice of artistic conservation.

Aesthetic Theory '16 - Ethics and Exile '17

Noor is a student at the University of Jordan, where she studies English Literature. She is currently pursuing a career in translation and literary editing. An award-winning spoken word artist, she is also passionate about writing and hopes to cultivate her literary practice after graduating.

Literature and Critical Theory '16 - Identity Politics '16 - Aesthetic Theory '16 - Ethics and Exile '17

Dima is a writer, translator, and researcher based in Amman. She received a master’s degree from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education.

writer/prisoner '19

Ramzi graduated from the University of Basra in Iraq, and moved to Jordan with his family as a financial coordinator. An avid photographer, he is passionate about street photography and particularly the aesthetics of downtown Amman. He has presented both his photography and philosophical reflections to the Jordan Photographic Society. 

Philosophy of Culture '15

Nader is Clinical Associate Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University, where he teaches Arabic language, literature and culture. He is also the Summer Director of Sijal Institute for Arabic Language and Culture in Amman. An accomplished translator, his current research offers fresh readings of exilic cultural production in Arabic, English and Hebrew.

Psychoanalysis '16

Emily is a novelist. Her most recent book, A Word For Love, was published by Penguin Random House. She has lived and worked across the Middle East and North Africa through Fulbright scholarships in Jordan and Syria, where she studied religion and language with a women’s mosque movement. She holds a BA from Swarthmore College and an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis.

Ethics and Exile '17

Rula was a Professor of English Literature and Feminist Theory at the University of Jordan, where she spearheaded curriculum development in Women's Studies and inspired a generation of students, scholars, and activists. Her scholarship and pedagogy has also left imprints in the United States, where was often a visiting professors.

Ethics and Exile '17

Elizabeth is a Doctoral Fellow at Darat al Funun in Amman and a PhD student at the University of Michigan, where she specializes in Islamic Studies and Art History. She is currently conducting research on artistic encounters between historic Islamic art objects and modern art practices, examining various ways in which the past and notions of Islam are actively mediated in modern art making.

Islam and Critical Theory '16

Elham is a graduate student at the University of Jordan. Her dissertation explores Adorno's writing on Jazz in relation to its usage as a trope of liberation in Arab-American literature. She has worked as a translator for three years, and is in the process of translating a number of Arab literary texts into English.

Literature and Critical Theory '16 - Islam and Critical Theory '16 - Psychoanalysis '16 - Aesthetic Theory '16

Haneen is an independant artist based in Amman. She is also an art teacher at the International Academy -Amman's IB Program, where she specializes in Art History and Theories of Knowledge. At the Institute, she is interested in researching the relationship between socio-historical phenomena and artistic production, particularly focusing on the work of the twentieth century artist Francis Bacon.

Aesthetic Theory '16

Rory is a PhD Candidate in Art History at Northwestern University and a Fulbright Scholar in Amman. Her dissertation on Palestinian visual culture considers the illustrated pamphlets, posters, films, and photojournalistic representations produced during the revolutionary period (1967-1982). She has previously served on the Chicago Palestine Film Festival committee and is currently conducting dissertation research in Jordan.

Identity Politics '16 - Islam and Critical Theory '16

Kelsey is a PhD candidate in Ethnomusicology at the University of Colorado-Boulder. She is using a Fulbright Scholarship to study the relationship between identity politics and the production of music and dance in the Circassian-Jordanian community of Jordan. Her focus is on how such art practices inform and inflect political protests and revolutions in the region.

Identity Politics '16

Ayah is a PhD candidate of Modern English Literature at the University of Kansas. She was a Lecturer in the University of Jordan before moving to the US. Her research focuses on Critical Prison Studies and Neocolonialism.

writer/prisoner '19