Mai Yamani
Mai Yamani | |
---|---|
Born | 6 Sept 1956 | (age 66)
Nationality | Saudi |
Occupation(s) | Anthropologist, scholar, author |
Academic background | |
Education | Bryn Mawr College Somerville College, Oxford |
Academic work | |
Institutions | Visiting scholar at Carnegie Middle East Centre, Beirut, 2008-2009.
Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution, Washington DC, 2008. Research Fellow at Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, London, 1997-2007 |
Mai Yamani (Arabic: مي يماني; born 6 September 1956) is an independent Saudi scholar, author and anthropologist.
Early life
Yamani was born in Cairo, Egypt, in 1956 to an Iraqi mother from Mosul and a Saudi Arabian father from Mecca. Her paternal grandfathers came from Yemen, hence the surname Yamani ("from Yemen"). Her early education included schooling in Baghdad, Iraq and Mecca, Saudi Arabia. She attended secondary school at the renowned Château Mont-Choisi in Lausanne, Switzerland, from 1967 to 1975. She received her bachelor's degree summa cum laude (with highest honors) from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania; and subsequently attended Somerville College, University of Oxford, where she was the first Yemeni woman to obtain a M.St. and a D.Phil. from Oxford, in social anthropology.
Career
She started her career as a university lecturer in Saudi Arabia, and became a scholar at leading international think tanks in the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East. She has been a research fellow at the Royal Institute for International Affairs in London; a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC; and a visiting scholar at Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. She speaks fluent Arabic, English, French and Spanish, and has a working knowledge of Persian, Hebrew and Italian.
Works
- Changed Identities: The Challenge of the New Generation in Saudi Arabia. Royal Institute of International Affairs. 2000. ISBN 978-1-86203-088-6.
- Cradle of Islam: The Hijaz and a Quest for Arabian Identity. I.B.Tauris. 21 August 2009. ISBN 978-0-85773-110-4.
- 1956 births
- Living people
- Saudi Arabian academics
- Saudi Arabian anthropologists
- Social anthropologists
- Bryn Mawr College alumni
- Alumni of Somerville College, Oxford
- Saudi Arabian people of Iraqi descent
- Saudi Arabian women academics
- Saudi Arabian women anthropologists
- 20th-century Saudi Arabian women scientists
- 21st-century Saudi Arabian women scientists
- Yemeni people stubs