Doha: The Doha Institute Board of Trustees (BoT) presided by Dr. Azmi Bishara, Chair of Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, has appointed Dr. Abdelwahab El Affendi as Acting President of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies succeeding Dr. Yasir Suleiman Malley.
On this occasion, Dr. El Affendi thanked BoT for honouring him with this mission, which comes during a critical period of global health crisis and praised the high performance led by Dr. Azmi Bishara and his predecessor Dr. Malley.
The new Acting President thanked the Qatari leadership and people for providing support and resources, affirming that the Institute will double its efforts during the coming period to fulfil its mission towards serving the State of Qatar, its people and its institutions, the Arab nations as well as the international scientific community.
Pointing out that Doha Institute will continue to make distinguished contributions to the rest of Qatar’s Higher Education Institutions in order to developing social sciences and humanities, graduating qualified generations of researchers and professionals, and reinforcing the Institute’s position as one of the many positive contributions that Qatar makes to the world.
Dr. El Affendi has held the position of Dean of the School of Social Sciences and Humanities at DI since 2017. Before that, he served as Head of the Politics and International Relations Program at DI (2015-17).
Dr. El Affendi holds a PhD in Political Science from Reading University, UK. He has a Master’s Degree in Philosophy from Swansea, University of Wales, UK; and a Bachelor Degree in Philosophy from the University of Khartoum, Sudan.
Dr. El Affendi worked as coordinator of the Democracy and Islam Program at the University of Westminster (since 1998). He also held the position as diplomat in the Sudanese Foreign Ministry (1990-1997) and as a London-based journalist, including editor or managing editor of several publications (1982-1990).
Dr. El Affendi was a visiting fellow/professor at the Christian Michelsen Institute (Bergen, Norway), and the Universities of Northwestern (Chicago), Oxford, Cambridge, and the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization (Malaysia). He also delivered keynote speeches and lectures at most major universities in the US, UK and a number of universities in Asia, Africa and South America.
