Dr Afaf Jabiri

Afaf Jabiri is a Senior Teaching Fellow at the Centre for Gender Studies, SOAS University of London. She contributed to the teaching of courses on Gender and Islam and Gender in the Middle East at SOAS as well as at the University of Roehampton and University of Leicester. Afaf is the author of the book ‘Gendered Politics and Law in Jordan: Guardianship over Women’.

For the last 20 years, she has been advocating for gender equality, law, and policy reform in the Middle East. She is a member of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr Centre for Human Rights’ global Initiative on violence against women. She was the Regional Director of the Karama (Dignity) Network and the Director of the Jordanian Women’s Union Aid Centre and Shelter for women’s survivors of violence. She has also worked as women’s protection officer at UNHCR and served as a policy and advocacy advisor for international and domestic NGOs and UN agencies. She took part in several UN missions to conflict areas, such as: Libya, Syria, and Yemen.

Afaf contributed to several global action-oriented research projects related to gender equality in the Middle East, which entailed analysis of gender equality, family laws, gender based violence, and women’s empowerment programmes at the regional and national levels, such as, the UNDP Global Report on ‘Gender Equality in Public Administration’; the Law School of Northeastern University’s (Boston) publication on ‘Due Diligence and States: Responsibilities in Combating Violence against Women’; and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s (EBRD) study on ‘Women’s Agency, Choice and Economic Participation in the MENA region’.

Teaching and research interests: gender and the Middle East; gendering migration and diaspora; gender and religion; gender and development; Muslim and secular women’s movement in the Middle East, and Palestinian refugees.

Education: PhD in Gender Studies/Centre for Gender Studies/SOAS/2014

MPhil in International Politics/University of Glasgow /2004