Dr. Nadia El Cheikh was appointed as the new dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the American University of Beirut. She is the first woman to be appointed as Dean of AUB’s original founding faculty. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences is AUB’s oldest and largest faculty yet it never had a female dean in its 150-year history.

Dr. Nadia el Cheikh is a historian of the Abbasid Caliphate and Byzantium, with research focus on women and gender. She earned her BA in History and Archaeology with distinction from AUB in 1985 and her PhD from Harvard University in 1992. She came back to work at AUB that same year and was promoted to the rank of Professor in 2006. She officially took office at the Faculty on September 1, 2016.

Here’s an excerpt of her bio taken from the AUB website:

She has served as Director of the Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies (2000-04 and 2006-09) and as Chair of the Department of History and Archaeology (2013-2015). She was Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2003 and 2004 and at Harvard University in 1998.

Dr. El Cheikh received the New York University, Global Affairs’ International Visitors Program Grant in 2004 and has been the recipient of many AUB research grants, notably, the Mellon Summer Research Fellowship in 1995, 1996, and 1999; and the University Research Board short-term and long-term Faculty Development Grants.

In 2007 she was the Shawwaf Visiting Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University.

She has published three history books and co-edited three edited volumes, including AUB One Hundred and Fifty, AUB’s main sesquicentennial academic publication issued in 2016. In addition, she has delivered more than 100 published articles, reviews, invitational lectures and conference/workshop papers.