1. Dr. Carsten Walbiner
Carsten Walbiner holds a Ph.D. in Arabistics. He works since more than two decades in the field of academic cooperation between Germany and the Arab world and spent many years in the Near East. From 2016-2019 he was the director of the EU-funded HOPES project that provided refugees from Syria and vulnerable youth from the host communities with higher education opportunities in the countries neighboring Syria and Egypt. Currently, he heads the follow-up project HOPES-LEB implemented in Lebanon.
2. Dr. Sulaiman Mouselli
Sulaiman Mouselli, Ph.D., is Dean and senior lecturer of Finance at the Faculty of Business Administration at the Arab International University (AIU) in Daraa, Syria. He is also the Director of International Relations at AIU and the national coordinator of an Erasmus+ project for capacity building in higher education (“MORALE”). Previously, he worked from 2010 to 2014 as a lecturer at the Faculty of Economics at Damascus University. He was ranked among the best 10 international researchers in social sciences in Syria. His research spans the area of financial markets, corporate governance, and higher education.
3. Dr. Nahed Ghazzoul
Nahed Ghazzoul is an assistant professor in Linguistics. She holds a Ph.D. in Linguistic and a Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education from Lancaster University, UK, as well as an M.A. in Linguistics from the University of Surrey, UK. She worked at different higher education institutions including Aleppo University/Syria, Lancaster University/UK, and Jerash and Alzaytoonah Universities/Jordan, and was a post-doc-researcher at Columbia University’s Global Centre/Amman. Currently, she is a full-time researcher and a member of staff at Paris Nanterre University. She is a Syrian activist, who has been advocating for the rights of refugees in education on all levels, and for other relief issues. She is a member of the Civil Society of the UN special Envoy to Syria (CSSR), for the political process, and a member of the Brussel small committee of the donors to Syria and the neighbouring countries. She published a couple of papers in high indexed journals.
4. Suad Shumareye
Suad Shumareye is a senior desk officer in the Center for International Academic Collaborations at the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). She has graduated in Islamic Studies from the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms University in Bonn Magistra Artium in 2009. Between 2013 and 2015, Ms. Shumareye completed a part-time binational Master’s programme at the University of Education in Ludwigsburg and Helwan University in Cairo in the field of International Education Management. She has been a DAAD staff member since 2009 and was most recently responsible for the management of funded projects in Russia and Central Asia in the area of Transnational Education. Since 2019, she has been working as a senior desk officer and regional coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa in S21.
5. Dr. Zoya Masoud
Zoya Masoud, M.Sc., studied architecture and urban planning in Damascus, Hamburg and Dar es Salaam. Before the beginning of the Syrian war, she worked as a site architect within different restoration projects in the old cities of Aleppo and Damascus. After being granted with DAAD scholarship between 2012 and 2015, she worked in different German cultural institutions like the Berlin Museum of Islamic Art, BTU Cottbus, and the German Archaeological Institute. Since 2019, she is carrying out her research on experiencing the loss of built heritage in the old city of Aleppo at the Technical University of Berlin within the research Project “Identity and Heritage.” In the Summer term of 2021, she is giving a course about cultural conservation in the MENA region.
6. Dr. Salam Said
Salam Said holds a Ph.D. in Economics and Social Sciences from the University of Bremen in Germany. She is a lecturer at Karlsruhe University and works also as a policy adviser at the Middle East and North Africa Department of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in Berlin. Her research focuses on Arab economics, socioeconomic developments in the MENA Region, and the political economy of Syria.
7. Dr. Reinhard Babel
Reinhard Babel, Ph.D., is Head of Section P24, Cooperation Projects in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Latin America at the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) in Bonn. He studied Literature, Philosophy, and Dramatic Art at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, Germany from which university he also obtained his Doctorate degree in 2014 in Comparative Literature. From 2006 to 2010 he worked as a DAAD-Lecturer in Chile at the Universidad de Concepción, and between 2014 and 2019 he was Director of the DAAD Information Center in Bogotá, Colombia. Since September 2019 he is based at DAAD HQ in Bonn.
8. Dr. Dhiah el Diehn I. Abou-Tair
Dhiah el Diehn I. Abou-Tair received his doctoral degree in computer science from the University of Siegen, Germany, 2008. He is an Associate Professor in the School of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, German-Jordanian University, Jordan. Dr. Abou-Tair has been involved in several EU and German-funded research and capacity building projects including EDU-SYRIA, a scholarship higher education degree programs that support Syrian refugees in Jordan and underserved/underprivileged Jordanian youths and implemented through a consortium of partnerships with national and international NGOs and academic institutions.