Core team

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Dhiaa Kareem Ali is currently a lecturer at the Department of English at the University of Kufa. Researching the intersection of discourse, society and politics. His research interests are centred on critical discourse studies, language,  racism, discrimination and self and other representation. He is also an honorary associate research fellow at the University of Exeter. His was awarded a project on  'Post-DAESH Identity (Re)construction in the War- torn Areas, funded by the Nahrein Network at University College London, and a visiting scholarship  by the British Institute in Iraq on the Mandaeans in Iraq Today: Perceptions, Heritage Exclusion and Community'. Dr. Dhiaa completed his PhD at Newcastle University in 2018. 

Abdulkareem Yaseen is a lecturer at University of Diyala. He did his PhD (Linguistics) at Newcastle University and MA (Linguistics) at University of York with research interests in the area of language variation and change (Mainly Mosul & other Iraqi varieties) sociolinguistics , dialectology and heritage languages. He worked, as a team member, on a Nahrein-funded project that addresses a war-torn community of Iraq. He has also won a BISI-Nahrein Visiting Iraqi Scholarship to investigate Christians' heritage practices in Mosul.

Alaa Al-Halbosy is a lecturer at Al-Iraqia University, College of Arts, English Department. His research interest is in identity and folklore in literature, transculturality and transnationalism, and racism. Currently, he is working on African American transcultural literature. He received a grant to do his PhD in the UK on African American identity funded by the Iraqi Prime Minster's Office. Also, he received a grant by Nahrain Network of the University College London to do a project on the Post-Daish Identity of Alkarma city/ Anbar. His most recent publication was entitled as “The Ghostly Hope: A Study of Contrasts in Toni Morrison’s Beloved” in the Journal of Global Scientific Research in Social Sciences and Humanities 2022.  

Ayad Al-Shibeeb is a researcher and academic at the University of Babylon - Babylon Center for Civilizational and Historical Studies. He holds a PhD in Philosophy of Language – from the Department of Persian Language - University of Baghdad. He is interested in Iraqi heritage and Babylonian history and has many works in the field of linguistics as well as in the field of heritage and Babylonian history. He is one of the founders of the University Museum in the Babylon Center, which includes many ornamental heritage holdings. He participated in many scientific conferences and cultural seminars on the city of Babylon and the ornamental heritage, as well as participating in many courses in the field of language, manuscripts and Arabic calligraphy inside and outside Iraq. 

Dr. Qais Al-Saadi is an Iraqi Mandaean academic who works as Director of Mandaean Studies in Germany. He has a Ph.D. in Instructional Technology, and a post-doctoral in Mandaean studies. Former General Secretary of the Supreme Spiritual Council of the Mandaeans in Iraq 1980-1996. Currently, Dr Al-Saadi works as the head of the Mandaean Organization in Germany 2002 till now and the ambassador of peace. He has published 18 books on Mandaean, including language dictionaries, rituals, histories, and translations. He presented field studies on the Mandaeans in Syria, Iraq, Iran, and the countries of the Diaspora in cooperation with the International Society for Threatened Peoples and the World Peace Organization. He worked on documenting the Mandaean heritage of UNESCO and the record of the Mandaean language, an endangered language, in the UNESCO Atlas of 2006. Dr Al-Saadi also created more than one Mandaean font to print the Mandaean computer language and print the Mandaean book, Ginza Rabba, in the Mandaean language in full. He also supervised several master's and doctoral dissertations related to Mandaeans in Iraq, Iran and Algeria, and was asked by Iraqi and Arab satellite stations to talk about the Mandaean people and their heritage..

Dr. Zainab Abdel Amir is a staff member at the University of Baghdad- College of Fine arts- Department of Performing Arts. She is specialized in children's theater and puppet theatre. She is an activist in the field of childhood and youth. She is president and one of the founders of the Iraqi Cultural Center for Childhood and Puppet Arts from 2011 to 2022. She is a representative of the Arab Foundation for Puppet and Puppet Theater in Iraq since 2020 until now. She is also a representative of the UNIMA international puppet organization in Iraq and the head of the UNIMA Iraq Center. She is also a member of the Iraqi  Writers Union and a member of the Administrative Board of the Children's Literature Forum / General Union of Writers and Writers in Iraq from 2019 until the beginning of 2021. She worked as a puppet designer and actress in many theatrical puppet shows. She participated in many local and international puppet festivals. She has many specialized publications in the field of puppet arts.

Amir Mohammad  is a researcher and academic specializing in drama/literature and theatrical criticism. He works as a faculty member at the University of Kufa / College of Education / Department of Fine Arts. He is interested in employing his specialization in addressing social issues and promoting the cultural heritage of Iraq. He performed many theatrical works that advocated women's and children's rights. He also completed a series of works that tackled humanitarian crises, especially the issue of displacement caused by ISIS, and simulate the national cohesion between the spectra of the Iraqi people .

Zahraa Hadi Kazem is an Iraqi artist born in Babil in 1985. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the College of Fine Arts at the University of Babil in 2007, and a Master's degree in Fine Arts with a specialization in Contemporary Art Philosophy from the same university in 2009. In 2013, she obtained a PhD in Fine Arts Philosophy, specializing in Drawing, from the College of Fine Arts at the University of Babil. She is currently a professor at the College of Fine Arts at the University of Babil and a member of the Iraqi Artists Syndicate at the central office in Baghdad, as well as a member of the Iraqi Artists Association. Zahraa has had three solo exhibitions: "Munamnamat" in 2008, "Journey No. 2016" in 2016, and "Orchid" in 2018. She has also participated in many local and international group exhibitions. Zahraa has published several research papers on topics such as the psychological connotations in Francis Bacon's paintings, visual distortions and their impact on aesthetic taste in urban representation in Babil province, and the contemporary cultures and their impact on teenagers' behavior, using Korean culture as a case study. Other publications included:

"The Depiction and Representations of Pandemics in Contemporary Iraqi Art.

The Impact of Modern European Art Movements, Symbolism, and Liberation on Painting" and "Applied dimensions to activate the sources of knowledge in children's drawings for primary schools".

Zahraa has also supervised and reviewed several theses and dissertations in her field of specialization.

Dr. Ashraf Riadh Abdullah is a senior lecturer at the University of Mosul, College of Arts, English Department. His research interests are sociolinguistics, language and identity, virtual identity, language and social media, computer-mediated communication, corpus linguistics, and pragmatics. He is well published, one of his main contributions being a chapter on virtual identity in the Routledge Handbook of Language and Digital Communication. He also has various research papers published locally and internationally. He teaches and supervises at both postgraduate and undergraduate levels. He is an alumni member of the University of Leeds in the UK having done his PhD and also taught there. He has also co-authored a book on technical and business English which will become part of the curriculum for 3rd year undergraduate students at English departments in Iraq. He enjoys traveling and socializing with friends.

Dr. Areej Sadiq Dawood is a lecturer at Al-Yarmok University College, Department of English, Diyala. She did her PhD in Linguistics in the Centre for Language and Communication Research, School of English, Communication and Philosophy (ENCAP), Cardiff University, UK. Her specific areas of expertise are in pragmatics, discourse analysis and interactional sociolinguistics. Her research focuses on mitigation and politeness in talk and text and institutional discourse.

 Dr. Amer Sultan has been a tutor in the School of History and Archaeology, Bangor University for the last four years providing tuition for Ph.D. students. He also served as a senior lecturer in modern history at Kirkuk University, and the dean of the Education School from 2005-2006. In his doctoral thesis entitled ‘Political and Islamic Movements in the Middle East and Democracy: Concepts and Cases’, he has deep knowledge of Iraqi and Arab history as well as contemporary developments and social movements in the region and tries to build a new hypothesis about the state-building.
 

Dr. Sultan is also well-versed in the theory and practice of peace-building and conflict resolution in different approaches. Over the last 12 years, he has worked on a variety of peace studies projects with Columbia, New York University, and Relief International, both in his capacity as a lecturer at the History Department and as a private scholar-activist who has followed very closely the development of democratic institutions in Iraq. 

 Samar Maqusi is a Research Fellow at Univeristy College London's Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, working inside PEARL, a leading laboratory where we explore the ways in which people interact with their environments. Samar is also part of the research team at UCL’s RELIEF centre. Her work documents and investigates modes of sociality and vitality in the camps, inside a burdened Lebanon, while drawing analysis and reflections on possible forms of livelihoods between the camp and the city. Samar’s career as an architect and urban specialist includes 13+ years of experience in international development, including urban design and development in conflict-areas. Before moving to UCL, Samar worked with UNRWA (UN Agency for Palestine refugees) as an Architect/Physical Planner, focusing on programmes of shelter rehabilitation and camp improvement. Samar completed her PhD at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London, in which she investigated the politics of space-making inside the Palestine refugee camps from their inception as scattered relief tents to the highly dense and urbanized architectural form they have become today, mainly focusing on Jordan and Lebanon. She is involved in documentary film-making, spatial installations and exhibited her work and photography in London and the US.