Speakers

H.E. Dr Ali bin Tamim has served as Secretary General of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award since 2011 and is also the Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre. He has held senior leadership roles across the UAE’s cultural and heritage sectors, including Chairperson of the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque Centre, Chairman of its Executive Committee, and Board Member of the National Archives (2015–2018). He previously managed the Kalima Translation Project and served as General Manager of Abu Dhabi Media Company (2016–2019). Dr bin Tamim has been a jury member for leading cultural awards, including the Prince of Poets Programme, Dubai Cultural Award, and the Khalifa Award for Education, and has served on the Supreme Committee of the State Appreciation Award. He holds a PhD in Literary Criticism from Yarmouk University and a Master’s degree from the University of Jordan. He is Editor-in-Chief of Al-Markaz: Majallat al-Dirasat al-Arabiyya and has contributed extensively to cultural and media initiatives across the UAE.

Muhsin al-Musawi has been Professor of Arabic and Comparative Studies at Columbia University since 2002. With extensive teaching experience across the Middle East and Tunisia, and a prolific body of work in both Arabic and English, he is widely regarded as one of the foremost authorities in Arabic literary studies. A distinguished scholar and critic, his research spans multiple periods and genres, combining philological rigor with theoretical insight. He serves as editor of the Journal of Arabic Literature, the field’s foremost academic journal, and has acted as academic consultant for numerous institutions worldwide. Al-Musawi led the largest translation and cultural program in Iraq between 1983 and 1990 and has received several major awards and honours, including the Owais Award (2002), the Kuwait Prize (2018), and the King Faisal International Prize (2022). His book The Arabian Nights in Contemporary World Culture won the Sheikh Zayed Book Award. His latest work, Poetic Desire and Literary Theft (2026), continues his endeavor of rethinking Arabic literary history and theory.

Bilal Orfali is the Sheikh Zayed Chair for Arabic and Islamic Studies at the American University of Beirut (AUB) and Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at NYU Abu Dhabi. He is the former M.S. Sofia Chair in Arabic Studies at The Ohio State University. He holds a PhD (2009) and MPhil (2006) in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Yale University, as well as BA, MA, and BS degrees from AUB. An internationally recognized scholar, he serves on the editorial boards of several journals and encyclopedias. His research focuses on classical Arabic philology and Islamic mysticism, particularly in the 10th–11th centuries, with an emphasis on literary transmission, Arabic anthologies, and the intersections of Qurʾānic studies, theology, and Sufism. He is the author and editor of more than two dozen books, including The Maqāmāt of Badīʿ al-Zamān al-Hamadhānī (2022) and The Anthologist’s Art (2012), which have significantly contributed to the study of classical Arabic literary culture.

Chair of the Department of Applied Linguistics at the American University in Cairo since 2013, Reem Bassiouney is an Egyptian author and scholar. She previously held academic positions at Georgetown University, the University of Utah, and taught at the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge. She has also served on the judging panels of the Excellence in Literature Award (Supreme Council of Culture, 2024) and the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (2023). She holds a PhD and an MA in sociolinguistics from the University of Oxford, and a BA in English from Alexandria University. Widely acclaimed for both her scholarly and literary work, she is the author of several novels, many of which have been bestsellers and translated into English by Roger Allen. Several have received major literary prizes, including the Naguib Mahfouz Award and the Sheikh Zayed Book Award. Her work engages language, identity, and history, contributing significantly to contemporary Arabic literature and sociolinguistic studies worldwide today.

Professor of Language Sciences at the University of Tunis and former Head of the Department of Arabic Language, Literature, and Civilization. He completed his academic training in Tunisia, earning his PhD and Habilitation from the University of Manouba and the University of Tunis. His research focuses on semantics and the philosophy of language, and he has translated foundational works by Georges Mounin and John Searle into Arabic. For his scholarly achievements, Dr. al-Saadi received the King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz Award for Translation (2011), the ALECSO-Sharjah Award for Linguistic and Lexical Studies (2021), and the Sheikh Zayed Book Award for Translation (2023).

Marco Di Branco is Associate Professor of “Religious History of Islam” at Sapienza University of Rome. He received advanced training in Byzantine Epigraphy at the Italian Archaeological School of Athens and later earned a diploma in Arabic Language and Culture from IsIAO. He has held fellowships at the Italian Institute for Human Sciences in Florence, the Program in Hellenic Studies at Princeton University (as Visiting Fellow), the German Historical Institute in Rome, and the American University of Beirut (Marie Curie Fellow). He has taught Byzantine Civilization and Byzantine Archaeology at the University of Milan, the University of Basilicata, and the School of Specialization in Archaeology of Matera. His research focuses on Late Antique Athens, Muslim presence in early medieval Italy, and Islamic perspectives on Greco-Roman history. His publications include the annotated edition of the Kitāb Hurūšiyūš, the Arabic translation of Historiae adversus paganos by Paulus Orosius, which was awarded the Sheikh Zayed Book Award 2025 in the Translation category.

Caterina Mauri Caterina Mauri has been Associate Professor at the University of Bologna since 2016. Her research focuses on linguistic typology, language change, and the analysis of spoken language, integrating these dimensions of variation. Formerly PI of the SIR project Linguistic expression of ad hoc categories, she currently coordinates the KIParla corpus of spoken Italian and the PRIN PNRR project 'DiversIta - Diversity in Spoken Italian'. Editor of several volumes, author of three monographs and numerous journal articles, she received the ALT Greenberg Award in 2009 and has been involved in national and international projects. Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Linguistic Typology at the Crossroads. As of October 2023, she is a member of the University's Quality Assurance Board. From 2025 she is part of the Working Group on CoARA. She coordinated the BA course on Languages, Markets and Cultures of Asia and Mediterranean Africa (2019-2022) and served on the University Committee for Research Evaluation (Area 10, 2020-2023).