Georgetown University: School of Foreign Service in Qatar

The Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar was awarded four research grants totaling more than $2.6 million dollars in the latest round of funding from the Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF). The grants, funded under the National Priorities Research Program (NPRP), will cover projects by Georgetown faculty in the social sciences and humanities.

The grants cover a variety of topics from international relations to linguistic learning. Georgetown’s Center for International and Regional Studies will undertake a study of the growing role of Qatar and Saudi Arabia as mediators in regional and global conflicts.

Meanwhile, SFS-Qatar Arabic professors Abbas Al-Tonsi, Amira El-Zein and Yehia Mohamed will team up with Hana Zabarah from Georgetown’s campus in Washington, DC, to study new ways of teaching Arabic to native speakers of the language. “This idea came about nearly one year ago upon noticing Education City students’ lack of exposure to Arabic texts, even at a school level. Our research is driven by the belief that language creates a sense of belonging; it is not just a communication tool,” Al-Tonsi said. 

From a more economic perspective, Alexis Antoniades, a professor of economics at SFS-Qatar, is working on a regional project analyzing inflation rates and the implication for the Gulf Countries. This project will be the first comprehensive micro study of Qatar’s economy, as well as the economies of KSA, Bahrain, Oman, UAE, and Kuwait.

Finally, Frieda Wiebe, the head of SFS-Qatar’s library, will be teaming up with the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown’s Washington campus to develop an Information Resource to support research on Islamic medical and scientific ethics.

In this second cycle, the NPRP committed more than $86 million in funding less than 20% of the 482 proposals that were submitted. For Georgetown, more than 44% of the proposals submitted were accepted, an increase of nearly 20% from the University’s previous acceptance rate.

“Our faculty’s success in this round of grant funding is strong evidence to Georgetown’s commitment to being a leading research university here in Qatar, as well as the world,” said Victoria Pedrick, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Georgetown’s Qatar campus.

The NPRP is part of the Qatar National Research Fund that seeks to promote active research in Qatar. The aim of the program is to benefit Qatar through improving the stock of human capital, as well as extract research that could support the state’s rapid growth.