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.

Tariq Adely is a translator and journalist. He graduated from Brown 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. He hopes to introduce works of Arabic literature to English-speaking audiences.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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