Daniel Martin Varisco

Daniel Martin Varisco is an anthropologist, historian and international development consultant who served as Research Professor in Social Science at Qatar University and coordinator of Social Science research in QU’s Center for Humanities and Social Sciences from 2014-2017. He has also received fellowships from the Institute for Social Anthropology at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna and the Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg in Bonn, Germany and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He is President of the American Institute for Yemeni Studies. He conducted ethnographic and ecological study of traditional water rights and irrigation in the highland of Yemen in 1978-79 for his Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania (1982). He has consulting and research experience in Yemen, Egypt, Qatar, the UAE, Jordan, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic.

For Varisco’s posts on Tabsir since 2005, click here.

George El-Hage

George Nicolas El-Hage, Ph.D is a Lebanese-American poet, professor, linguist, administrator and writer. He acquired his B.A. in Arabic Literature from the Lebanese University in Beirut, Lebanon.  While in Beirut, El-Hage studied with and was influenced by poets like Buland al-Haidari and Khalil Hawi. He then emigrated to the United States where he completed both his Master of Arts and Ph.D. in Arabic and Comparative Literature at the State University of New York in Binghamton. His dissertation (later published into a book by NDU Press, Lebanon) was on William Blake and Kahlil Gibran: Poets of Prophetic Vision.  He has taught at Yale University, Binghamton University, The Lebanese University, Columbia University, the Monterey Institute of International Studies (a  graduate school of  Middlebury College) and the Defense Language Institute. His academic career has been equally spent between teaching, authoring, lecturing and administration. 

For El-Hage’s posts on Tabsir since 2007, click here.

El-Sayed el-Aswad

El-Sayed el-Aswad is an anthropologist who received his doctorate in anthropology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He has taught at Wayne State University (USA), Tanta University (Egypt), Bahrain University and United Arab Emirates University (UAEU). He conducted ethnographic studies in Egypt, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates and the U.S. (in Michigan: Dearborn, Bloomfield Hills and Milan). He has been awarded fellowships from various institutes including the Fulbright Program, the Ford Foundation, the Egyptian government, and the United Arab Emirates University (UAEU). He served as Chairperson of the Sociology Departments at both the UAEU and Tanta University as well as the Editor-in Chief of the Journal of Horizons in Humanities and Social Sciences: An International Refereed Journal (UAEU). He has published widely in both Arabic and English and is the author of The Quality of Life and Policy Issues among the Middle East and North African Countries (Springer 2019). His book Religion and Folk Cosmology: Scenarios of the Visible and Invisible in Rural Egypt (Praeger Press, 2002) was translated into Arabic (2005) by Egypt’s Supreme Council of Culture.

For El-Aswad’s posts on Tabsir since 2006, click here.

Joel W. Abdelmoez

Joel W. Abdelmoez is a PhD candidate in Comparative Politics of the Middle East, at Lund University’s Department of Political Science and the Center for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies. His main research interest pertains to gender politics, feminist activism and mediatized/performed gender, with special reference to the Arab world, particularly Egypt and Saudi Arabia. He has previously taught as an adjunct lecturer at Stockholm University, where he also worked as Director of Studies for Middle Eastern Studies, and has a BA and MA in Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, as well as an MPhil in Gender Studies from the University of Cambridge.