the arab world and oxford

8/18/2019 The Arab World and Oxford

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October 2013

The future of collaborativescholarship and educationOxford and its Middle Eastern partners are pushing forward the frontiersof research and education with new links across the Arab World.

New collaborative research projects, academic posts, scholarships andtraining programmes for university leaders have been established toadvance medicine, development, environment, energy, water and humanrights. This activity builds on more than 400 years of ties between theUniversity and the region, demonstrating how historic links can remainrelevant in a changing world.

Many of Oxford’s partnerships in the Middle East link our leadingresearch and teaching centres to governments concerned with the impactof rapid development in the region.

Collaborative research projects include work to study water owsand inform water policy, developing mathematical models to plotthe movement of sand dunes, and the launch of a joint PetrochemicalResearch Centre with the King Abdulaziz City of Science and Technology

(KACST) in Saudi Arabia. Other research focused on the region includeswork on relations between the Islamic world and the West, in partnershipwith the Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies.

Oxford has been fortunate to benet from the generosity of many donorsin the region, as well as the support of our Arabian alumni. We lookforward to entering an exciting new era of collaboration together.

Our aims in the Arab WorldOxford aspires to play a leading educational andresearch role in the ongoing development of theArab World.

As the region grows and changes, our departmentsare proud to be providing consulting and trainingservices, allowing Middle Eastern institutions to draw

on our world-leading expertise in education andresearch as they establish themselves internationally.

Recent years have seen the launch of severalnew universities across the Middle East. Withthe new institutions come new ways of thinkingabout learning. In this fertile environmentOxford continues to seek new links and furtheropportunities for collaboration.

At the same time, we are continuing to expand ourresearch into the region. The Middle East Centre atSt Antony’s College, one of the leading centres forthe study of the Middle East in the English-speakingworld, will be expanding into a new landmark

building by Pritzker Prize-winning architect ZahaHadid in 2014.

Oxford has long been a home for the most ableminds in the world, and we will continue to recruitthe most excellent students in the Arab World tostudy at undergraduate, postgraduate and researchlevels. We are very proud of the achievements ofour alumni in the region and we hope that we willcontinue to grow our alumni body by producingable students who can contribute meaningfully tothe future of the Middle East and North Africa.

Hanging lamp, 1299 - 1340,

commissioned by Sultan al-Nasir

Muhammad ibn Qala’un

(Ashmolean Museum)

Libya:

First post-

Gaddafi

opinion

survey on

perceptions

of the future

carried out in

2012.

Saudi Arabia:

KACST-Oxford

Petrochemical

Research Centre

exploring ways to

make oil cleaner.

Maths research

into the movement

of sand dunes

and volume of oil

reservoirs.

Qatar:

Qatar

Foundation

funds chairs in

Islamic Art and

architecture,

Contemporary

Islamic Studies.

UAE:

Geographers

contributing

to Abu

Dhabi’s

water plan

and water

and food

security

across the

region.

Oxford highlights in the Arab World:


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Student profle: Asil Sidahmed, Sudan

Course:MPhil in Development Studies

The Oxford Experience:Oxford is cosmopolitan,international, stimulating, eventfuland engaging. My favourite thingabout the University is the greatresources students have access

to – as a social scientist, I can try adierent library every day.

Aspiration:I would like a career that mixespolicy and academia throughresearch. Oxford has provided mewith rigorous research training andtaught me to engage with sourcesand contextualise authors in a wayI hadn’t done previously. I feel likeI am a better researcher now than Iwas before.

Centres of learning for Arabian cultureScholars at Oxford are able to draw on theUniversity’s exceptional range of Arabicand Islamic research and resource centres.

The Middle East Centre

Founded in 1957, the Middle East Centreat St Antony’s College is Oxford’s hub for

the interdisciplinary study of the modernArab World.

In 2014 the Centre will expand into anew, landmark building by Zaha Hadid.The Softbridge Building will form a bridge between two older buildings,reecting the Centre’s role as a bridgeof understanding between the Arab andWestern worlds. It will house a 125-seatlecture theatre together with the Centre’sLibrary and Archive. The Archive, withparticularly strong collections on Omanand the Palestine Mandate, is part-funded by the King Abdul Aziz Foundation forResearch and Archives in Saudi Arabia.

The Grifth Institute

For more than 70 years the GrithInstitute has been at the heart ofEgyptology and Ancient NearEastern Studies. Now situated in theSackler Library complex, the Instituteholds some 30,000 volumes on

Egyptology and Middle Eastern studies,including excavators’ records from thetomb of Tutankhamun.

The Khalili Research Centre

The Khalili Research Centre isOxford’s centre for the art and materialculture of the Middle East. Its majorongoing projects include “AncientArabia: Languages and Cultures”,which will build a single portal forancient Arabian resources, creating aglobal database for the region’s ancientlanguages and cultures.

Historic Arabian treasures in Oxford’s museums and libraries

Generous donationsfrom the late HRHPrince Sultan BinAbdulaziz Al-Saudof Saudi Arabia andSaudi entrepreneur andphilanthropist Yousef Jameel have helpedto create the JameelCentre, a new home

for the extensiveIslamic Art collectionat the AshmoleanMuseum. These giftshave also establishedan online resourcefor the museum’sEastern Artcollections, makingthe Ashmolean’sancient and moderntreasures accessiblearound the world.

The Islamic World has a long tradition of innovation inscientic instruments. Today, meticulously designed astrolabes,globes and qibla indicators comprise one of the most importanthistorical collections of Islamic scientic instruments, ondisplay at the Museum of the History of Science. Treasureson display at the Museum include the oldest complete gearedmechanism in the world – an astrolabe made by Muhammad b.Abi Bakr in Isfahan in 1221/2.

The Pitt Rivers Museum has worked closely with MiddleEastern partners to make its collection of 5,000 Wilfred Thesigerphotographs available in the region. Its collaborations includeworking with the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture andHeritage on a permanent exhibition at Jahili Fort, Al Ain.The images document Thesiger’s 1940s crossings of theRub’ al Khali (the Empty quarter), the Kurdish regions ofIraq and the Yemeni Civil War.

One of Europe’s oldest libraries,the Bodleian Library has beenacquiring Arabic manuscriptssince its inception – founderSir Thomas Bodley was keento encourage the acquisition ofArabic and Islamic writings.Today the Bodleian has one ofthe most important collectionsof Middle Eastern manuscriptsin Europe, with more than 5,000literary classics, philosophicaltracts, medical texts andmathematics books. In 2002 theBodleian acquired an illustrated

manuscript of a hitherto unknownArabic cosmographical treatise,known as the Book of Curiosities.The Book, which contains anincredible early world map, isregarded as a key text for thehistory of science.

An artist’s impression of the new Softbridge Building at the Middle East Centre. Credit: ©Zaha Hadid Architects

Sitarah made for the Mosque of the Prophet in Medina,

1791 - 1792, Egypt (probably Cairo), 268 x 164 cm (detail)

(Ashmolean Museum)


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Faculty posts fundedby Arab World donors

Oxford has been fortunate to benet fromthe generosity of a number of Arab worlddonors who have funded key facultyposts at the University.

One of the largest gifts, made by theQatar Foundation, created the Ieoh MingPei Professorship in Islamic Art andArchitecture. The professorship is namedfor architect IM Pei, who designed thestunning Museum of Islamic Art inDoha, which opened in 2008.

The Qatar Foundation also created theHis Highness Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani Chair in Contemporary IslamicStudies, currently held by Professor TariqRamadan (see below).

These professors and other Oxford

faculty engage in teaching and researchexchanges with the Museum of IslamicArt and the Qatar Faculty of IslamicStudies.

Other important posts endowed by ArabWorld donors include:

• The Khalid bin Abdullah Al SaudProfessor of the Contemporary ArabWorld

• The King Mohammed VI Fellowship inMoroccan and Mediterranean Studies

• The Dubai Ports World Professorship

or Entrepreneurship and Innovation atSaid Business School

• The Shaikh Zayed Bin Sultan AlNahayan Lectureship in Islamic Studies

Research and policy developmentInforming water policy

Dr Rachel McDonnell, a Senior ResearchFellow in the School of Geography, isleading a project partnering MiddleEast and North Africa governmentorganizations, international researchcentres and NASA. The project will

generate new data on water resources,crop production and climate changeimpacts. It will combine satelliteobservations with leading edgemodelling to aid decision-making onlocal water and food security issues.

Dr McDonnell has been heavily involvedwith Middle Eastern water issues formany years. She helped write the AbuDhabi water master plan and then theUAE Water Conservation Strategywhich have both led to many importantchanges in water management and policy

development.

Applying mathematics to theadvancement of science, theeconomy and society

Now in the fth and nal year of its $25mgrant from King Abdullah Universityof Science and Technology (KAUST)in Saudi Arabia, the Oxford Centre forCollaborative Applied Mathematics(OCCAM) has demonstrated howmathematics and scientic computationcan deliver economic and social benetfor the region.

OCCAM is a hub for more than 50researchers who have focused onoutstanding mathematical and scienticproblems as well as economic issuesthat concern Saudi Arabia. Throughcollaboration with KAUST scientists,progress has been made in areas asdiverse as dune motion, oileld reservoirmodelling, and water ltration and bioinformatics.

Staying at the forefront ofinnovation in petroleum andpetrochemical research

The KACST-Oxford PetrochemicalResearch Centre is a research centre,created by the Oxford Department ofChemistry and the King Abdulaziz City

for Science and Technology (KACST)– the Saudi Arabian national scienceagency and laboratories – to driveforward petrochemical research.

In August 2013 the Centre received a newgift of £1.5 million from KACST, allowingit to expand to include colleagues atImperial College, Cambridge and Cardiuniversities, creating a network of world-leading petrochemical researchers.

The Centre is working in a number ofareas vital to future petrochemical use,such as the development of materialsthat will allow the clean combustionof fuels and the challenge of turningcarbon dioxide into fuel. The Centre willallow new innovative petrochemicaltechnologies to be adopted more widelyand will help in the education andtraining of leading research sta.

Understanding post-Gadda Libya

Researchers from the Institute of HumanSciences, working with colleagues fromthe University of Benghazi and OxfordResearch International, carried out the

rst national survey of Libya in the post-Gadda era, in 2012.

The face-to-face survey of more than2000 Libyan men and women paintedan optimistic picture of the country’sfuture, with citizens looking aheadto improving lives and rating healthservices, education and the environmentas priorities for Libya’s future.

Publication of the survey – the resultsof which were widely covered bypress around the world – has beenfollowed by a workshop on human

rights, displacement and asylum, heldcollaboratively by Oxford’s RefugeeStudies Centre, the UNHCR and hoststhe University of Tripoli.

Tracking and predicting the movement of sand dunes is a

mathematical challenge with a very practical application.

HH Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani Chairin Contemporary Islamic StudiesNamed by TIME magazine as among the 100 mostinuential thinkers of the 21st Century, ProfessorTariq Ramadan has written and lectured widely andcontributed substantially to debate on the issues faced

by Muslims in the West and the Islamic revival in theMuslim world.

His latest books are The Arab Awakening: Islam and theNew Middle East (2012), The Quest for Meaning: Developinga Philosophy of Pluralism (2010), What I Believe (2009),Radical Reform, Islamic Ethics and Liberation (2008).

The Book of Curiosities (Bodleian Library)


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Oxford-style learning for Gulfregion executivesThe Executive Education Team of SaidBusiness School has built extensive linkswith the Gulf Cooperation Council region.In recent years custom programmes have been developed and delivered for a widerange of audiences including:

• A leadership development programmefor senior executives of the QatarFoundation, delivered jointly in theUK and Qatar. The programme aimsto enhance the expertise of top tiermanagers and improve eciency acrossthe organization.

• The Saudi Advanced Management andLeadership Programme, supported bythe Saudi Arabian General InvestmentAuthority, an intensive four-weekexecutive development programmeoered to leaders from a range of publicand private sector organisations acrossthe Kingdom.

• For Abu Dhabi, the ExecutiveEducation Team has run 16 LeadershipDevelopment programmes for top civilservants, training a total of more than300 people.

Students and staff from theArab WorldMore than 90 Arab students from 14dierent counties and regions currentlystudy at Oxford.

Outside of their studies our Arabianstudents socialise through vibrantstudent societies including the OxfordUniversity Arab Cultural Society, theOxford University Islamic society andnumerous national societies.

The University also employs 23 membersof academic sta from the region, mostlyin research posts.

Scholarship opportunitiesGraduate students from the Arab Worldwho are considering studying at Oxford

are able to apply to several signicantfully-funded scholarship schemes.

The Clarendon Scholarships are thelargest University-run scheme forpostgraduate students coming to Oxford

from anywhere in the world, with 100scholarships awarded every year forexcellence in any academic eld. TheWeideneld Scholarships and Leadership

Programme, also open to studentsfrom most Arab countries, providesgraduate scholarships and access to acomprehensive programme of leadershipdevelopment, long-term mentoring andnetworking.

Scholarships reserved for students fromor studying the Arab world includethe Said Foundation Scholarships forMaster’s or DPhil students from Syria, Jordan or Lebanon. The Oxford Centrefor Islamic Studies Scholarships supportpostgraduate students from Muslim

countries undertaking study in eldsrelevant to the needs of Muslim societies.

Oxford alumni help shapethe regionMore than 650 Oxford alumni live inthe Middle East and North Africa. Morethan a quarter of these live in the UnitedArab Emirates, but there are also largenumbers of alumni in Saudi Arabia andEgypt. Alumni groups are active in eightcountries in the region.

Oxford graduates have gone on to

impressive careers across a range of eldsin the Arab World. Our most impressivegraduates include:

• Government leaders such as HHSheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak

Al Nahyan, the UAE’s Ministerfor Culture, Youth, and SocialDevelopment and former Ministerfor Higher Education and Scientic

Research, HH Haitham bin Tariq AlSaid, Oman’s Minister for Heritage andCulture, and Prince Faisal bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Governor ofSaudi Arabia’s Madinah Province.

• Academics and civil society leaders,such as Rashid Khalidi, the Palestinian- born Edward Said Professor of ArabStudies at Columbia University,and Farah Al-Daghistani, ExecutiveDirector of the Jordan Hashemite Fundfor Human Development.

• Senior business executives, such as

Mohamed El-Erian, CEO of PIMCO,one of the world’s largest bond funds.

The Arab World & Oxford: a timeline

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6 3 6

1

8 7 8

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9 3 9

1

9 8 5

2

0 1 4

Oxford establishes

Laudian Professorship

of Arabic

The Bodleian Library

acquires its first Egyptian

papyrus manuscripts,

which are more than

1000 years old

The Griffith Institute is

established as a centre

for Egyptology

The Oxford Centre

for Islamic Studies, a

Recognised Independent

Centre of the University,

is founded

The Middle East

Centre will move

into a landmark

new building by

Zaha Hadid

Oxford’s Arab World in numbers

94studentsfrom the

Arab World

652alumni in theArab World

23

members ofstaff from the

Arab World

G r e

g S m o l o n s k i / O x f o r d U n i v e r s i t y I m a g e s

the arab world and oxford

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