Advisor |
Dr. Emran El-Badawi is program director and associate professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Houston. He founded the Arab Studies program at UH and he has designed, implemented and assessed degree programs in the Humanities and Sciences. These include degrees in Arab-Middle East Studies, Religious Studies and interdisciplinary studies in Energy, Development and Sustainability, with a focus on US-Middle East relations. El-Badawi has consulted for various industries, including government, law and oil & gas. He is also active in program development and fund raising.
El-Badawi also served as founding Executive Director and Treasurer of the International Qur’anic Studies Association, which is the world’s first learned society of its kind. Part of IQSA’s goal is to bridge the divide between scholars in the west and those in Muslim majority countries through international conferences.
El-Badawi has published in English as well as Arabic and has made dozens of national as well as international media contributins or appearances, including for The New York Times, Al-Jazeera, Forbes, Christian Science Monitor and Association Relative à la Télévision Européenne (ARTE). His awards include honorable acclaim by the British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Prize for his book on The Qur’an and the Aramaic Gospel Traditions. His research examines Middle Eastern and Islamic civilization broadly, including subjects such as late antique Arabia, Qur’an and Bible, Syriac churches and classical Islam, and interdisciplinary discourse on modernity, gender and sustainability.
El-Badawi has a bachelors degree in Computer Science from Rutgers University, and he received his Ph.D. with honors in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago.