Our Past
We launched in September 2015 in partnership with the Middle East Institute at the National University of Singapore. Since then we have held numerous public lectures, seminars, youth-oriented activities on topics such as politics, economics, culture, and social issues. In addition, we regularly host international scholars for networking and research opportunities. For more information about our past achievements, you can download our annual report here.
Going forward, we plan to build on our strengths. We intend to foster research output by local and international scholars conducting research on topics relevant to our mission. We will also continue to reach out to the Kuwaiti public and civil society through various activities.
Our People
Thorsten Botz-Bornstein
Professor of Philosophy
PhD in Philosophy, Oxford University. Research interests: Aesthetics, Non-Western philosophy, Comparative philosophy.
Martin Rosenstock
Assistant Professor of German
He holds an MA from Goethe-Universitaet, Frankfurt, Germany and a PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He previously held appointments at the University of Connecticut and Iowa State University.
Shahd Alshammari
Assistant Professor of Literature, Department of English
Research Interests: Illness narratives, Disability Studies, Arab women’s writing, Kuwaiti media and television.
Carine Zanchi
Assistant Professor of French
Research interests: Third language acquisition, History of French language teaching in the Middle East, The role of contextualization in teaching and learning French, Numerical literacy for language teaching.
Ismail Lala
Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Gulf University for Science and Technology
He has previously taught at the Oriental Institute, University of Oxford. His interests include Islamic philosophy, Sufism, Qur’anic exegesis, Islamic law, and Hadith studies.
Angela Gonzalez-Echeverry
Associate Professor of Spanish
PhD Spanish Literature, Arizona State University, Tempe. Humanities & Social Sciences Department. Research interests: - Contemporary Colombian Literatures/ Latin America Literatures, Memory and Post-Conflict, Gender Studies, Citizenship, and Human Rights. Interdisciplinary Approaches to Culture and Society.
Cristina Navarro
Associate Professor
Cristina Navarro is an Associate Professor of Communication at Gulf University for Science and Technology in Kuwait. Her research interests include journalism roles, online public relations, social media communication, professionalism, leadership and public relations competencies, knowledge and skills. She holds an PhD from Rey Juan Carlos University (Spain).
Jennifer Lofkrantz
Associate Professor
Jennifer Lofkrantz is an Associate Professor of History at GUST. She holds a PhD in African History from York University, Toronto. She is primarily a historian of precolonial West Africa and of contemporary northern Nigeria and the Sahel region. Her areas of expertise include historical and contemporary West African jihad movements, historical and contemporary West African ransoming practices, Salafism, Salafi Jihadism, Islamic law (Mālikī), comparative historical and contemporary slavery, and women and gender in Africa.
Bahtiyar Kurambayev
Associate Professor
Dr. Bahtiyar Kurambayev is an Associate Professor at GUST). He has a PhD in Mass Communications from University of Southern Mississippi. Prior to joining GUST in 2023, he has held teaching positions at American University of Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan) and KIMEP University (Kazakhstan). His research interests include international journalism practice and culture, journalism education and research, media ethics, censorship and self-censorship among others.
Ismael Louber
Assistant Professor
Dr. Ismael Louber is researcher in the field of education and TESOL. He earned a Doctorate in Education from the University of Exeter and has taught in the UK, France and the Gulf region. His research interests revolve around the implications of the global spread of English for educators worldwide. He is also interested in English as a medium of instruction (EMI) in the Arab world and issues pertaining to language, values and ideology in education. He has mainly conducted qualitative/interpretive research.
Faculty Affiliates
Wafa F. AlSayed
Postdoctoral Research and Teaching Fellow
PhD in international relations from the London School of Economics (LSE). Research interests: Gulf history and politics, historical sociology, constructivism, international relations.
Mauricio Duarte
Associate Professor of Spanish
PhD Hispanic in Languages and Literatures, University of Pittsburgh. Humanities & Social Sciences Department. Research interests: Transnational Approaches to Literary and Visual Cultures in Latin America, Environmental Humanities and Political Ecology., Cultural Theory.
Manal Hosny
Assistant Professor of French and the Head of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at GUST
Research interests: 19th century French literature, Egyptian francophone literature.
Associate Members
Mariam F. Alkazemi
Assistant professor of public relations at Virginia Commonwealth University
Ph.D. in mass communications, University of Florida. Research interests: media effects, health.
Emily Goshey, PhD
GUST research affiliate and a postgraduate research fellow at the Institute for Studies in Global Prosperity
Dr. Emily Goshey finished her Ph.D. in the Department of Religion at Princeton University in June 2019. Her ongoing project focuses on the role of faith and religion in social movements and in collective responses to injustice. Fascinated by the study of modern Islam through less-conventional approaches, she has explored perennial questions about Islam’s place in the modern world and Islamic orthodoxy by studying minorities and material culture.
Nesma Elsakaan
Assistant Professor of Arabic at the University of Palermo, Italy
Her research covers women’s writings, gender studies, and intertextuality. Currently, she works on the representations of black women in Arabic literature. Among her publications are Islamic Feminism in Egypt: Women, Religion and Gender Justice (2019, in Italian), Niswiyya, Nisā’iyya and Unthawiyya: Some Reflections on Arabic Terms for ‘Feminism’ (Littérature et culture arabes contemporaines, 7/2019), and “Milānīn”: ru’ya taḥarruriyya li-l-lawn wa-l-ğasad min ḫilāl al-sard al-nisā’iyy (Rawāfid, Beirut 2022).
Lisa Blaydes
Professor of Political Science at the University of Stanford
She is the author of Elections and Distributive Politics in Mubarak’s Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and State of Repression: Iraq under Saddam Hussein (Princeton University Press, 2018). She holds degrees in Political Science (PhD) from the University of California, Los Angeles and International Relations (BA, MA) from Johns Hopkins University.
Tanver Khan
Researcher at Department of Political Science, University of Kashmir, Srinagar, India
He works on International Politics, Geopolitics, Geostrategy, Indo-Pacific, South Asia, Belt and Road Initiative, and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
