Hazem Ben-Gacem

Hazem Ben-Gacem is the Founder and Chief Executive of BlueFive Capital, a newly-formed global investment manager based in Abu Dhabi. BlueFive Capital focuses on infrastructure, energy (including new energy and new materials as well as oil and gas), and private equity opportunities across the Global South, in particular the GCC, China, Southeast and Central Asia, and Latin America.

Hazem is a veteran of the investment industry, with more than 30 years of experience across industries and geographies. He was previously the Co-Chief Executive Officer of Investcorp, the largest non-sovereign asset manager in the Middle East, and successfully led private equity investments across North America, Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and China. He chaired several of the firm’s private equity investment committees, as well as overseeing all of Investcorp’s activities in the Middle East, its global investment activities in the infrastructure and technology sectors, and all private equity activities across Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Japan. He also led the firm’s global investor relations platforms across both its private wealth platform and its institutional investor relations. Amongst others, Hazem sat on the Investcorp Group’s Executive, Operating and Risk Management Committees, and was the Vice Chairman of Investcorp’s ADX-listed permanent capital vehicle, Investcorp Capital.

Prior to his Co-CEO appointment in 2018, Hazem led Investcorp’s European private equity and global technology private equity teams. Before joining Investcorp in 1994, Hazem was a member of Credit Suisse First Boston’s M&A team in New York.

Hazem holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University. Until 2022, he was a serving member on the Tunisian National Shooting team (50 meter discipline), achieving a bronze medal in the 2017 African Shooting Championships.

Hazem is a member of the Executive Board of the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government, the Advisory Board of the University of Oxford’s Middle East Centre, and the Dean’s Council of the Harvard Medical School. In 2017, he founded the Harvard Office in Tunisia, the first formal presence for Harvard University in the Arab world.

Professor Avi Shlaim

Avi Shlaim is an Emeritus Fellow of St Antony’s College and a former Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford. He was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 2006.

His main research interest is the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is author of Collusion across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine (1988); The Politics of Partition (1990 and 1998); War and Peace in the Middle East: A Concise History (1995); The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (2000, second edition 2014); Lion of Jordan: King Hussein’s Life in War and Peace (2007); and Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations (2009). He is co-editor of The Cold War and the Middle East (1997); The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 (2001, second edition 2007); and The 1967 Arab-Israeli War: Origins and Consequences (2012). 

His most recently published book is Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew (2023).

Professor Shlaim is a frequent contributor to the newspapers and commentator on radio and television on Middle Eastern affairs.

Professor Joseph Sassoon

Joseph Sassoon is currently a Professor at Georgetown University and holds the al-Sabah Chair in Politics and Political Economy of the Arab World. He is also a Senior Associate Member at St Antony’s College, Oxford. In 2013, his book on Iraq and the Ba‘th Party won the prestigious British-Kuwait Prize for the best book on the Middle East.

Born in Baghdad, Sassoon completed his DPhil at St Antony’s College, Oxford. He has published extensively on Iraq and its economy and on the Middle East. His latest book is The Sassoons, the Great Global Merchants and the Making of an Empire (New York: Pantheon, 2022).

Professor Philip Robins

Dr Serra Kirdar

New York-born, Dr Serra Kirdar of Iraqi origin, can easily be considered a global citizen, feeling equally at home in the US, Middle East and England where she is based with her son.

Kirdar received her schooling in London at St Paul’s Girls School, going on to earn her BA in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford, where she also completed an MSc in Comparative and International Education. She then completed her DPhil at St Antony’s College, Oxford University in 2004 entitled: Gender and Cross – Cultural Experience with Reference to Elite Arab Women. Her combined academic career and interest in education and women’s empowerment has led to her active role and support of education and empowerment.

Kirdar is a Life Fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford University, and is also Chairman of the Board of the Middle East Centre at the college and editor of the book Education in the Arab World. She serves on the board of the Steering Committee for the Emerging Market Symposium, Green Templeton College, Oxford University and is on the Advisory board of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. She is also an ambassador for Pembroke College, University of Oxford and serves on the Board of Trustees for the Eisenhower Fellowship.

In 2021, Kirdar launched her namesake e-commerce fashion platform. Partnering with craftspeople from across the globe, Serra Kirdar is a female-founded digital fashion and lifestyle platform dedicated to shining a light on independent designers. 

Built on four key values: Artisanal Craft, Community-Led, Female-Founded, and Responsibly Produced, Kirdar is passionate about supporting emerging talent. Built on the notion creativity is the guiding light without discrimination, her motto is our door is always open and there’s room for everyone. Not just another retail platform, by partnering with designers with a story to tell, Kirdar’s curation of ‘products with purpose’ sets Serra Kirdar apart. 

Suzy Assaad Wahba

For more than ten years, Suzy was an anchor and reporter for Bloomberg Television in New York City, where she covered topics such as debt and equity capital markets, commodities and foreign exchange, and NASDAQ and the tech boom. 

Prior to her work at Bloomberg, she was employed at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, DC, where she advised Latin American countries on the development of their capital markets; the World Bank, where she was responsible for implementing policies to assist underdeveloped countries privatise state-owned enterprises; and the American Security Bank (now Bank of America), where she focused on cross currency training. An Egyptian-American, Suzy is fluent in four languages and has lived in the Middle East and Europe. She holds a BA in Finance from George Washington University and an MPhil from St. Antony’s College at Oxford University.

Danah Anwar Al Mulla

Danah is the Chief Strategy Officer and board member at Al Mulla Group Holding Company. She assumed this position in March 2010 after 10 years of experience with the Group as Director of Planning.

As part of Al Mulla Group’s executive leadership team, Danah’s responsibility includes setting up and leading progressive strategies of the Group and its subsidiaries. In addition, Danah holds several key leadership roles within the Group’s businesses as Chairperson of Al Mulla Finance, Deputy Chairperson of Royale Hayat Hospital, Head of the Operations Committee at Kuwait College of Science and Technology, and Deputy Chairperson of Al Mulla Rental and Leasing.

Danah serves on the board of several advisory and non-profit organisations including the National Bureau for Academic Accreditation, the Board of Trustees of the Kuwait College for Science and Technology, the Centre for Child Evaluation and Teaching, Sanad Foundation for Disabled Children, and Injaz Kuwait. 

Danah holds an MA (Hons) in Oriental Studies and an MSc in Economics for Development from the University of Oxford.

Professor Nayef Al-Rodhan

Professor Nayef Al-Rodhan is an Honorary Fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford University, Head of the Geopolitics and Global Futures Program, Geneva Center for Security Policy, Switzerland, Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Philosophy, School of Advanced Studies, University of London, UK, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts ( FRSA).

He is a Philosopher, Neuroscientist, and Geostrategist and in 2014, he was voted as one of the top 30 most influential neuroscientists in the World; In 2017 as one of the Top 100 geostrategists In the World; In 2022, as one of the Top 50 most influential researchers whose work could shape 21st-Century Politics and Policy.

He is a prize-winning scholar who has written 25 books and more than 300 articles. His research focuses on the Transdisciplinary Interplay between: Philosophy, Neuro-Techno-Philosophy, Neuroscience, Strategic Culture, Applied History, Geopolitics, Disruptive Technologies and International Relations and Security.

He holds an MD and a PhD, and trained in Neurosurgery/Neuroscience research at the Mayo Clinic, Yale University and Harvard University. He founded the Neurotechnology programme, headed Translational Research and founded the Laboratory for Cellular Neurosurgery and Neurosurgical Technology at MGH, Harvard. He was on the faculty of the Harvard Medical School, has published extensively on Neuroscience research and won several research prizes. These include: The Sir James Spence Prize; The Gibb Prize; The Farquhar-Murray Prize; The American Association of Neurological Surgeon Prize (twice); The Meninger Prize; The Annual Resident Prize of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons; The Young Investigator Prize of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons; The Annual Fellowship Prize of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons.

His Geopolitical interests include: Geopolitics of the Middle East; Sustainable National and Global Security; Future Studies and Sustainable Global Order, Great Power Competition, Geopolitics of outer Space and Strategic Technologies; and Global Strategic Cascading Risks.

His Philosophical interests include: Global Justice; Human Dignity and International order; Transcultural Understanding and Security; NeuroPhilosophy of Human Nature; NeuroPhilosophy of History; History of Ideas; NeuroPhilosophy of Power, Cellular and Neurochemical Foundations and Predilections of Human Nature and Their Implications for Contemporary Geopolitics, War, Peace and the Potential for Moral, Political and Cultural Cooperation & Symbiotic Non-Conflictual Competition.

He has proposed many innovative theories and concepts in Philosophy, Global security, and Geopolitics. He is best known for several Philosophical and Analytic works on Global Politics that include: Sustainable History and Human Dignity; Emotional Amoral Egoism; 21st Century Statecraft, On Power, Symbiotic Realism; The Five Dimensions of Global Security; Critical Turning Points in the Middle East: 1915-2015; The Politics of Emerging Strategic Technologies; The Meta-Geopolitics of Outer Space; and The Role of the Arab-Islamic World in the Rise of the West.

Selected Publications: 

For additional information on Prof. Nayef Al-Rodhan’s books and articles, please see: www.sustainablehistory.com & https://oxford.academia.edu/NayefAlRodhan/Papers