kuwait conference

Globalisation and the Gulf: Economics and Security Kuwait Programme biennial conference, Kuwait City, 25-26 March 2009

This page provides a list of short biographies of our conference speakers and chairpersons.
 

Sheikh Dr. Mohammed Sabah Al-Salem Al-Sabah

Sheikh Dr. Mohammed Sabah Al-Salem Al-Sabah is Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the State of Kuwait.

He is also Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Kuwaiti Fund for Arab Economic Development. Between 1993 and 2001 Sheikh Dr. Mohammed Sabah Al-Salem Al-Sabah was the Kuwait Ambassador to the United States of America, and from 1985 to 1993 he was Associate Professor of Economics at Kuwait University.

In 1985 Sheikh Dr. Mohammed Sabah Al-Salem Al-Sabah obtained a PhD from Harvard University in Economics.



Mohammed Aly Raouf

Dr. Mohammed Aly Raouf is a Senior Researcher on environmental issues at the GRC and the Secretary-General of the Egyptian Forum on Environment and Sustainable Development. Prior to holding this position, he worked as a freelance consultant and lecturer in Environmental Accounting and Economics at the Environmental Institute at Ain Shams University in Cairo, Egypt, where he participated in a number of conferences and consultancy projects. He has also served as a consultant in the Government of Egypt’s Ministry of Industry and a financial analyst for the Badr Petrolreum Company (BAPETCO).

Dr. Mohammed Aly Raouf has authored a number of articles on environmental accounting, contracting and decision-making for publications both in Egypt and elsewhere, and has also submitted a number of conference papers on similar subjects. He received his doctorate in Environmental Sciences from Ain Shams University in October 2003 and has since participated in a number of training courses in economics, accounting, business administration and environmental sciences.



Yousef Al-Ebraheem

Dr Yousef Al-Ebraheem currently serves as the Economic Advisor at the Amiri Diwan in the capacity of a minister and is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Gulf Investment Corporation.

Previously, Dr Al-Ebraheem held a number of ministerial positions in the Kuwait Government, including Minister of Finance, Minister of Planning and Minister of State for Administrative Development Affairs.

Dr Al-Ebraheem received a PhD in economics from Claremont Graduate School, California in 1984.



Bader Mishari Al-Humaidhi

Bader Mishari Al-Humaidhi Mr Bader Mishari Al-Humaidhi served as the Kuwait Minister of Finance from 2005 to 2007. Prior to this he was the Director-General of the Kuwait Fund of Arab Economic Development.

Currently Mr Al-Humaidhi serves as the Chairman on the Board of Directors at several companies, including the MENA Investment Company.



Abbas Al-Mejen

Dr. Abbas Al-Mejren holds a Ph. D. in Economics from University of Exeter (UK) since 1984, and MA in Economics from University of Oregon (USA) since 1978. He is associate professor of Economics at Kuwait University and in 1991 was a visiting professor at University of Baltimore (USA). His research interest includes industrial economies, energy economics, microeconomics issues, monetary and fiscal policies. He is also expert in the field of economic and technical feasibility studies. His empirical works cover areas like Productivity Measurement, Subsidies to the Manufacturing Industry, International Oil Market, Privatization, Monetary & Banking Policies, and Fiscal Reforms. In 1987 he was chosen Director of Business Training Programs at Kuwait University. Between 1986 and 1989, he was partially seconded as economic expert to the Industrial Bank of Kuwait, and between 1994 – 1996, he was partially seconded to the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, and between 1997 – 2004 to the Ministry of Planning where he was responsible for finding means to enhance the privatization program in the Kuwaiti five years development plan. Between 2005 -2007, he was appointed as advisor in the Minister of Finance Office. At the present he is the director of the Energy and Environment Unit at the Center of Excellence in Management of Kuwait University and the Scientific Advisor to KFAS International Program with LSE. He has several refereed publications in Arab and International journals, and he is verified referee in eight academic journals. Dr. Al-Mejren is also professional trainer in the field of efficiency, productivity and economic and technical feasibility studies.



Sulaiman Al-Mutawa

Mr Sulaiman Al-Mutawa is currently Chairman of the Institute for Private Education and Training Company and the Pan Arab Management Company.

Previously Mr Al-Mutawa served as Minister of Planning in the Kuwait Government and as a member of the Kuwait Civil Service Council.



Mohamed Al Rumaihi

Born in 1942, Professor Mohamed Ghanem Al-Rumaihi is Professor of political sociology at Kuwait University. He has written extensively on the subjects of political sociology, social change in the Arabian Gulf region, and the changing culture of the Arab world, publishing more than twenty books and over two hundred articles.

Professor Al-Rumaihi is Editor in Chief of the daily newspaper Awan, the well-known magazine Alarabi and the Journal of gulf and Arabian Peninsula studies. He is also General Secretary for the Council of Culture, Arts and Letters and has served as an advisor to various committees on education, information, culture and politics, within the Government of Kuwait and private institutions.

Professor Al-Rumaihi has received a number of awards including the 1980 honorary award in social and economic studies from KFAS, the 1990 Ibn Sina Award (an award for international cultural activities), the 1996 Sultan al Uways Award (an award for humanities and future studies) and the 2003 republic of France award (chevalier dans l'ordre des arts et des lettres).



Abdullah K. Al-Shayji

Dr. Abdullah K. Al-Shayji is a Professor of International Relations and the Chairman of the American Studies Unit at Kuwait University. He is a Specialist in Gulf and US Politics. He served as Special advisor to the Speaker of the Kuwaiti Parliament and to its Foreign Relations Committee from 1992-1996. He acted as Counselor and Head of the Kuwaiti Information and Media Bureau at the Kuwaiti Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon from 2001-2004.

Dr. Alshayji has published over 25 academic articles in professional journals in both Arabic and English on issues related to elections and the Kuwaiti parliamentary experience, democratization, the Kuwaiti National Assembly and the external and internal factors affecting olitical reforms in the GCC states. He has also conducted studies on the US strategy in the Gulf region, NATO initiatives, Kuwait and GCC-Iraq relations, and GCC-Iran relations.



Ali Al-Shamlan

Ali A. Al-Shamlan is the Director General of the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences since 1985.

He was the Kuwait Minister of Higher Education 1988–92, Professor, Kuwait University, 1973–85; Chairman, Geology Dept., 1975– 78; Asst. Dean, Fac. of Science, 1978-82, and Dean 1982-84. He obtained his Ph.D. Degree in Geology from University of Texas at El Paso, U.S.A. in 1973. Honorary Degree: Ph.D. Degree from University of Massachusetts, M.A. U.S.A., 2001. He is the Founding Fellow, Islamic Academy of Sciences.

He is a member of various professional organizations – Member, Board of Trustees, Arabian Gulf University, Bahrain; Member, Board of Trustees, Gulf University for Science & Technology, Kuwait; Member, Board of Trustees, Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, Oxford University, United Kingdom to name a few.



Barry Buzan

Barry Buzan is Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at the LSE and honorary professor at Copenhagen and Jilin Universities. From 1988 to 2002 he was Project Director at the Copenhagen Peace Research Institute (COPRI). From 1995 to 2002 he was research Professor of International Studies at the University of Westminster, and before that Professor of International Studies at the University of Warwick. During 1993 he was visting professor at the International University of Japan, and in 1997-8 he was Olof Palme Visiting Professor in Sweden. He was Chairman of the British International Studies Association 1988-90, Vice-President of the (North American) International Studies Association 1993-4, and founding Secretary of the International Studies Coordinating Committee 1994-8. Since 1999 he has been the general coordinator of a project to reconvene the English school of International Relations, and from 2004-8 he was editor of the European Journal of International Relations.

He took his first degree at the University of British Columbia (1968), and his doctorate at the London School of Economics (1973). In 1998 he was elected a fellow of the British Academy, and in 2001 he was elected as an Academician of the Association of Learned Societies in the Social Sciences. He has written, co-authored or edited over twenty books, written or co-authored more than one hundred articles and chapters, and lectured, broadcast or presented papers in over twenty countries. In addition to theory, he has engaged in the public policy debates about security in Europe, South Asia, Southern Africa and East Asia. His current research interests focus on:

1) the conceptual and regional aspects of international security;
2) international history, and the evolution of the international system since prehistory;
3) international relations theory, particularly structural realism;
4) international society, and the English school approach to International Relations.



Howard Davies

Howard Davies is Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science. Prior to his current appointment he was Chairman of the Financial Services Authority, the UK's single financial regulator since 1998.

Howard Davies had previously served for two years as Deputy Governor of the Bank of England after three years as Director General of the Confederation of British Industry. From 1987 to 1992 he was Controller of the Audit Commission. From 1982 to 1987 he worked for McKinsey & Company in London and during 1985-1986 was seconded to the Treasury as Special Adviser to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He had previously worked at the Treasury and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, including two years as Private Secretary to the British Ambassador in Paris.

Howard Davies was educated at Manchester Grammar School and Merton College, Oxford, where he gained an MA in history and modern languages. In 1979 he was awarded a Harkness Fellowship and in 1980 took an MSc in management sciences at Stanford Graduate School of Business, California. Since 2002 he has been a Trustee of the Tate. He is a member of the governing body, Royal Academy of Music; and in 2004 was elected to an Honorary Fellowship at Merton College. In 2004 he joined the board of Morgan Stanley as a non-executive director. He was appointed to the Board of Paternoster in 2006 as a non-executive Director, and chaired the Man Booker Prize in 2007.



Anoush Ehteshami

Professor Anoush Ehteshami is Professor of International Relations and Head of the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University. He has also been a Fellow of the World Economic Forum. He was Vice-President and Chair of Council of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) 2000-2003.

His current research revolves around five over-arching themes:
• The Asian balance of power in the post-Cold War era.
• The ‘Asianisation’ of the international system.
• Foreign and security policies of Middle East states since the end of the Cold War.
• The impact of globalization on the Middle East.
• Good governance, democratization efforts, in the Middle East.



Gregory Gause

F. Gregory Gause, III is professor of political science at the University of Vermont and was director of the University's Middle East Studies Program (1998-2008). He was previously on the faculty of Columbia University (1987-1995) and was Fellow for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York (1993-1994). He is currently a Fulbright Scholar at the American University in Kuwait.

His research interests focus on the international politics of the Middle East, with a particular interest in the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf. He has published two books - Oil Monarchies: Domestic and Security Challenges in the Arab Gulf States (Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1994); and Saudi-Yemeni Relations: Domestic Structures and Foreign Influence (Columbia University Press, 1990). His book on the international politics of the Persian Gulf region will be published in 2010 by Cambridge University Press.

He received his Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University in 1987 and studied Arabic at the American University in Cairo (1982-83) and Middlebury College (1984)



David Held

David Held is Graham Wallas Professor of Political Science and co-director of the Centre for the Study of Global Governance at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

David Held was born in 1951 in Britain where he spent most of his childhood. He was educated in Britain, France, Germany and the United States. He has held numerous Visiting Appointments in the United States, Australia, Canada and Spain, among other places. In the last five years he has lectured regularly on questions of democracy, international justice and globalization to audiences in many countries.

Over twenty years ago David Held co-founded Polity, which is now a major presence in social science and humanities publishing.



Will Hutton

Will Hutton is executive vice chair of The Work Foundation, an independent, not for dividend research based consultancy which is the most influential voice on work, workplace and employment issues in Britain.

Will began his career as a stockbroker and investment analyst, before working in BBC TV and radio as a producer and reporter. Prior to joining The Work Foundation, Will spent four years as editor in chief of the Observer and he continues to write a weekly column for the paper.

Will has written several best-selling economic books including The World We’re In, The State We’re In, The State to Come, The Stakeholding Society and On The Edge with Anthony Giddens. In addition, he won the Political Journalist of the Year award in 1993.

In 2004, Will was invited by the EU Commission to join a High-level Group on the mid-term review of the Lisbon strategy and he acted as rapporteur for the report.

Other roles Will performs outside The Work Foundation include: Governor of the London School of Economics; Honorary Fellow, Mansfield College, Oxford; Visiting Professor, Manchester University Business School and Bristol University and is a member of the Scott Trust. He is also a Fellow of the Sunningdale Institute.

Will’s latest book, The Writing on the Wall: China and the West in the 21st Century, was published in the UK in January 2007 by Little, Brown.



Narayanappa Janardhan

Dr Narayanappa Janardhan is a Political Analyst and the Editor of Gulf in the Media. With a broad-based interest in the socio-political developments in the Middle East, his research areas include media and democracy in the Gulf region and Gulf-Asia relations. Dr. Janardhan was formerly with The Asian Age (New Delhi) and The Gulf Today (UAE) newspapers, and was the Gulf correspondent for the Inter Press Service (Asia-Pacific), Bangkok. He has had over 300 articles published in Indian and Middle East newspapers.

His forthcoming academic publications include ‘New Media in the Gulf – in Search of Equilibrium’, in Andrzej Kapiszewski and Mary Ann Tetreault (ed.), Politics After Saddam: Prospects for Reform and Democratization in the Gulf (Lynne Rienner); and ‘Kuwait: Never Before and Never Again’, in David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler (ed.), Daily Life of Civilians in Wartime (Greenwood Press). Dr. Janardhan was awarded a doctorate for his research on the Al-Sabah family’s relations with the National Assembly, which he completed at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, in 2001.



Giacomo Luciani

Professor Giacomo Luciani is Senior Advisor, Gulf Research Center and Director, The Gulf Research Center Foundation, Geneva. Since 1997, he has been Professorial Lecturer of Middle Eastern Studies at the Johns Hopkins University Bologna Centre.

Currently, he also teaches at the University of Lausanne, at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva and at Sciences-Po Paris’ Menton campus. From 2000-06, he was Professor of Political Economy and co-director of the Mediterranean Programme of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute. He has been visiting professor at the CAP, Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universitنt in München, Germany (2004-05), Institut d’Etudes Politiques (Sciences Po), Paris (1994-97) and the Department of Economics at UCLA (1986-88). From May 1990-May 2000, Prof. Luciani worked with ENI as Vice President in charge of international intelligence and major strategic projects involving several lines of business. Earlier, during 1988-90, he was Plan Operations Manager, SRI International team, at the Ministry of Planning, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. From 1977-1986, Prof. Luciani, who began his career as an economist with the Bank of Italy, was associated with the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI), first as Director of Economic Studies, then as Director of Studies. He founded and directed the Institute for Research on International Economics (IRECI) from 1974-77. (IRECI merged with the IAI in 1977).



Eva-Maria Nag

Dr Eva-Maria Nag received her PhD on Indian political thought from the LSE. She has taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses on political theory, ethics and public administration, and South and East Asian politics at the LSE, SOAS, King’s College London, and Richmond, the American University in London. She has also worked on global corporate issues with the Bertelsmann Foundation (Germany) and Tomorrow’s Company (London). She is currently the Executive Editor of Global Policy, an innovative and interdisciplinary journal bringing together world class academics and leading practitioners to analyse both public and private solutions to global problems and issues. She is also a Research Fellow at the Centre for International Studies at the LSE and is an expert in comparative political theory. Apart from her training in classical and contemporary Western political thought, she has trained and worked in the other traditions of political thinking, particularly South Asian and Arab. Her current research involves a comparative analysis of Western and Arab Gulf political perspectives on global governance in the face of global economic and social change.



Danny Quah

Danny Quah is Head of Department and Professor of Economics at The London School of Economics and Political Science.

Danny Quah obtained his Ph.D. from Harvard University and his A.B. from Princeton University. He joined LSE in 1991 after having taught as an assistant professor in MIT's Economics Department.

In the UK, he has served on the Academic Panels of H.M.Treasury and the Office for National Statistics. Quah is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research in London and a Governor of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.

From 1996 through 1998, he held a British Academy Research Award to study ``Growth and distribution in dematerialized, knowledge-based economies'', and from 1998 through 2000, an ESRC award for ``Trade and growth across weightless economies.'' In July 1998 the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded him a grant for continued study of the weightless economy and the economics of information technology. He continues to work on income distribution dynamics. To do much of his empirical research, Quah has developed his own econometrics shell tsrf, which he makes freely available (under the GNU Public License).

Danny Quah is on the editorial board of the Journal of Economic Growth. He had previously served on the editorial boards of European Economic Review Journal of Applied Econometrics, Macroeconomic Dynamics and Review of Economic Studies, and was Programme Chair for the year 2000 European Economics Association Annual Congress.

At the LSE, Quah has taught research courses in macro-econometrics, the first-year postgraduate macroeconomics course, and the introductory undergraduate microeconomics course to over 700 first-year students.

Danny Quah contributes regularly to the news media in London and elsewhere. Some of his weightless economy writings have been translated into 18 different languages. In January 2001 he was named one of ten heroes of dissemination by the ESRC.



Silvana Tenreyro

Silvana Tenreyro is Reader in Economics at the LSE, a Research Associate at the Center for Economic Performance (CEP) and Research Fellow at the Center of Economic Policy Research (CEPR). She acts as Associate Editor for the Review of Economic Studies and Economica and as an Editorial Panel Member for Economic Policy. Prior to joining the LSE she was Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank in Boston. Her research focuses on macroeconomics with a special emphasis on monetary economics, macroeconomic development, and international finance.

Silvana Tenreyro obtained her Ph.D. and Masters in Economics from Harvard University. Her work has been published in top academic journals, including The American Economic Review and The Quarterly Journal of Economics.



Mark Thatcher

Mark Thatcher is Professor in Comparative and International Politics, Department of Government, London School of Economics. His research is in the field of comparative regulation and public policy in Europe. It focuses on the design and creation of regulatory institutions and the effects of those institutions on the relationships between politics and markets. He has worked on the regulation of network industries by the EU and in Britain, France, Germany and Italy. His is currently studying regulatory networks and agencies in Europe, and the interactions between national and EU levels of decision making.

Recent publications include: Internationalisation and Economic Institutions: Comparing European Experiences (Oxford University Press 2007), which in 2008 won the Charles Levine Prize awarded by the International Political Science Association’s Research Committee on the Structure of Governance for best book in comparative policy and administration ; ‘Reshaping European regulatory space’, West European Politics June 2008 (with D Coen); ‘Regulatory agencies, the state and markets: a Franco-British comparison’, Journal of European Public Policy 14(7) October 2007; ‘Regulation after Delegation’, special issue of Governance, 18(3) summer 2005 (with D Coen); ‘Varieties of capitalism in an internationalized world’, Comparative Political Studies, 37(7), September 2004.



Kristian Ulrichsen

Kristian Ulrichsen is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow on the Kuwait Research Programme on Development, Governance and Globalisation in the Gulf States. He completed his PhD, entitled The Logistics and Politics of the British Campaigns in the Middle East, 1914-1922, at the University of Cambridge. Before joining the Centre for the Study of Global Governance, he was Senior Middle East Analyst at the Gulf Centre for Strategic Studies in London. His areas of research focused on political, economic, military and security trends in the member-states of the Gulf Cooperation Council. This resulted in the publication of a monograph (Alternative Strategies to Gulf Security in 2007) and numerous journal articles on aspects of energy and homeland security in the Gulf, the proliferation of trans-national threats to regional stability, and the future evolution of the Gulf Cooperation Council.



Reidar Visser

Reidar Visser is a research fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. He has a background in history and comparative politics and holds a doctorate in Middle Eastern studies from the University of Oxford. He has published extensively on the history of southern Iraq and the issues of decentralisation and federalism, including two books, Basra, the Failed Gulf State: Separatism and Nationalism in Southern Iraq (2005) and (edited with Gareth Stansfield) An Iraq of Its Regions: Cornerstones of a Federal Democracy? (2007). Many of his writings are available from his Iraq website, www.historiae.org.



Rodney Wilson

Professor Rodney Wilson is Director of Postgraduate Studies at Durham University’s School of Government and International Affairs. He currently chairs the academic committee of the Institute of Islamic Banking and Insurance in London and is acting as consultant to the Islamic Financial Services Board with respect to its Shariah Governance Guidelines. His previous consultancy experience included work for the Islamic Development Bank in Jeddah and the Ministry of Economy and Planning in Riyadh. He has written numerous books and articles on Islamic finance for leading international publishers as well as professional guides.

Professor Wilson’s teaches masters level courses on Islamic economics and finance and supervises PhD students working on Islamic finance. He has acted as Course Director for Euromoney Legal Training in London, Bahrain, Kuwait, Bangkok and Singapore, and taken courses for the Kuwait Investment Authority, the Commercial Bank of Kuwait, the Arab Banking Corporation, Citibank, HSBC, the Monetary Authority of Singapore and SJ Berwin, the international law firm and private equity specialist.