People

Salmaan Keshavjee

Salmaan_Keshavjee@hms.harvard.edu

CMES Interim Director

Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Executive Committee Chair

Dr. Keshavjee is a professor in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine and Department of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He also serves as a physician in the Division of Global Health Equity at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He...

Omar Abdel-Ghaffar

PhD Candidate in History and Middle East Studies

Omar Abdel-Ghaffar is a PhD candidate in the History and Middle East Studies program. He is primarily interested in Mamluk hinterlands and agricultural populations; their relationships to each other, to the law, to various networks of authority, and to...

Leila Ahmed

leila_ahmed@harvard.edu

Victor S. Thomas Professor of Divinity Emerita, Harvard Divinity School

Leila Ahmed came to the Divinity School in 1999 as the first professor of women's studies in religion and was appointed to the Victor S. Thomas chair in 2003. Prior to her appointment at HDS, she was professor of women's studies and Near Eastern studies...

Didar Ayşe Akbulut

didarakbulut@g.harvard.edu

PhD Candidate in History and Middle East Studies

person

Hasibe Akın Demir

hasibe@caticiftligi.com

PhD Candidate, Landscape Department, Istanbul Technical University

Hasibe Akın graduated with a bachelor's degree in architecture from Istanbul Technical University (İTÜ) in 2012 and completed her master's thesis in İTÜ's Architectural Design Program. She is currently writing her doctoral thesis in the İTÜ Landscape...

Shayma Al Harthi

salsinawi@g.harvard.edu

AM Candidate in Regional Studies—Middle East

Shayma Al Harthi is a writer and researcher tracing the private lives of language: its capacity to encrypt, translate, and reassemble at the seams. Working bilingually across poetry, policy, and archival practice, she explores how meaning survives, and...

Mahmoud Al-Thabata

mahmoudalthabata@college.harvard.edu

AB/AM Candidate in Regional Studies—Middle East

2025-27 Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship

Student Advisory Board, Harvard Radcliffe Institute

Mahmoud Al-Thabata is a researcher of international law, political economy, and Arab and Palestinian diplomatic history in the Center for Middle Eastern Studies’ concurrent AM program. His research examines Palestine and the broader Global South in the...

Sultan Alamer

salamer@fas.harvard.edu

Associate of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies

Nonresident Scholar, Carnegie Endowment of International Peace

Sultan Alamer is a nonresident scholar in the Carnegie Middle East Program. His research focuses on nationalism and state-formation, governance and technology, regional politics in the broader Middle East, with a special focus on the Arabian Peninsula...

Mohamed Albulushi

malbulushi@g.harvard.edu

AM Candidate in Regional Studies—Middle East

person

Alreem Alghafri

alreemalghafri@g.harvard.edu

AM Candidate in Regional Studies—Middle East

Alreem Alghafri is a master’s student in Middle Eastern studies at Harvard University. Her research interests focus on the political economy of the Gulf and the region’s transition toward knowledge economies in a post-oil future, particularly through...

Sarah Allen

sarahgraceallen@g.harvard.edu

AM Candidate in Regional Studies—Middle East

person

Hanna Alshaikh

halshaikh@g.harvard.edu

PhD Candidate in History and Middle East Studies

Hanna Alshaikh is a researcher of Arab and Palestinian intellectual history in the joint History and Middle Eastern Studies PhD program. Her research examines the role of the Palestinian diaspora in Arab world political discourse, with a special focus on...