IIAF Panel Members - American University in Dubai
DR. SABRINA JOSEPH
Appointed Provost and Chief Academic Officer of the American University in Dubai in January 2020, Dr. Joseph has twenty years of experience in higher education as a faculty member, researcher, and academic administrator. She is deeply familiar with the international higher education landscape, and has extensive experience in strategic planning, the development of new programs (both undergraduate and graduate), enhancing student retention, nurturing inclusive and collaborative learning environments, fostering engagement with industry and academia, and supporting faculty and student success through initiatives that promote research, entrepreneurship, mentorship, and student-centered learning.
Dr. Joseph joined AUD in January 2018 as Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences and Professor of History. Prior to this, she spent ten years at Zayed University (UAE), where she served as Associate Dean of the College of Sustainability Sciences and Humanities and later as Acting Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. During her tenure at ZU, Dr. Joseph worked closely with faculty, administrators and government stakeholders to promote women’s education in the UAE and broader region. Before moving to the UAE, Dr. Joseph had a rich and varied academic career in the US and Greece, teaching a range of history and interdisciplinary courses at the University of Portsmouth (Athens, Greece campus), Georgetown University, and Shippensburg University (Pennsylvania), where she also served on the International Education Council. Over the course of her career in the US and UAE, she has developed and implemented initiatives and curriculum changes that foster global awareness, champion diversity, and enhance students’ co-curricular experiences. Dr. Joseph is an advocate of interdisciplinary education with a liberal arts foundation, and was awarded the Global Inspirational Women Leadership Award by the Center for Economic and Leadership Development (CELD) in 2016 in recognition of her contributions to women’s education in the Middle East/Gulf region.
Dr. Joseph’s research is in the fields of Middle East and environmental history, encompassing work on land use and peasant legal rights, natural resource management, political ecology, women’s social history, and inter-faith relations during the early modern and modern periods. In addition to having presented her research at numerous conferences, Dr. Joseph has published several books and various articles in such journals as: Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations; Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies; Rural History: Economy, Society, Culture; The British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies; the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs; and Environment and History. Her research has been funded both by national and international grants. Currently, Dr. Joseph is involved in a research collaboration led by Harvard University, Ghent University and the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam focusing on global capitalism and commodity frontiers from the 16th-21st centuries.
In her free time, she enjoys reading, watching movies, traveling, and exploring the desert.
DR. MICAH ROBBINS
Dr. Micah Robbins is Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences and Associate Professor of English. Since joining AUD in 2014, he has taught a variety of courses on literature, academic writing, public speaking, and the humanities. He has also taken a leading role in creating or directing a number of programs, including Reading Across Campus, the English Bridge Program, and the Quality Enhancement Plan, for which he was awarded the President’s Award for Teaching Excellence in 2018. His research focuses on the literature of social, political, environmental, and epistemological crisis, from the Age of Revolutions to the Cold War. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Intelligence and National Security, The b2o Review, Protest on the Page: Essays on Print and the Culture of Dissent since 1865, and Language and Literature in a Glocal World. He is currently working on a book manuscript that focuses on the role of American literature in galvanizing the culture of dissent that developed during the 1960s.
DR. WAEL BAZZI
Dr. Bazzi was appointed Dean of the School of Engineering in August 2020. He joined AUD in 2006 and since then has served the University in various academic and administrative roles and responsibilities. He served as Chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) from 2018 to 2020. One of his earliest initiatives in the ECE department was to propose a new graduate program leading to a Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence. Under his tenure, the department witnessed significant growth in undergraduate enrollment. Prior to his role as Chair of the ECE Department, Dr. Bazzi served for five years as the Chair of the Mechanical Engineering Department. His notable accomplishments include the successful and timely accreditation of the Mechanical Engineering Program (UAE Ministry of Higher Education, ABET, and SACSCOC), the creation of an advisory board of prominent industry leaders, the introduction of smart classrooms, and the promotion of excellence in teaching, learning, and research. As a result, alumni of the Mechanical Engineering Department were admitted to graduate programs at prestigious institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, London Business School, and Cranfield University.
Dr. Bazzi is also an active teacher and researcher. His teaching portfolio includes more than 20 different courses in his areas of expertise. Over the past years, he has maintained an active research profile with numerous publications in reputable international journals and conference proceedings.
Dr. Bazzi holds a Ph.D. from the University of Waterloo in Canada and a Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the American University of Beirut. His research areas of expertise include wireless communication systems and propagation, computational modeling, and adaptive signal processing.
DR. FARAH ARKADAN
Dr. Farah Arkadan is an Assistant Professor of Marketing and Accreditation Lead at the School of Business in the American University in Dubai. She holds a Ph.D. from Cranfield School of Management in the UK. Her research interests lie at the nexus of customer experience, organizational studies and marketing management. A key focus of her work is investigating organizational meanings and practices of customer experience management. Dr. Arkadan’s research has involved doing in-depth case studies with organizations in the retail and service sector, and in business-to- consumer and business-to-business contexts. She has conducted analysis on what makes for a winning customer experience based on her case studies in addition to more than one hundred organizations associated with the UK Customer Experience Awards. Dr. Arkadan has also published several teaching cases related to customer experience, retail and B2B marketing.
Dr. Arkadan has previously worked in the Global Service and Productivity team at Burberry headquarters in London. There she was involved in various strategic customer initiatives that aimed to deliver a leading physical and digital seamless luxury customer experience. She has lived in different parts of the USA, Europe, and the Middle East for work or study.