Leila Fawaz is a Lebanese historian and academician. She is the founding director of

The Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies The Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies is an interdisciplinary education and research organization founded in 2001, devoted to the regional study of the Eastern Mediterranean within the greater Middle East. The Center is part of The ...

from 2001 to 2012. Fawaz was born in Sudan to Greek-Orthodox Lebanese parents and raised in Lebanon. She took two degrees at the American University of Beirut between 1967 and 1968 and studied history at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

between 1972 and 1979. From 1990 to 1994, Fawaz was the editor-in-chief of ''

The International Journal of Middle East Studies The ''International Journal of Middle East Studies'' is a scholarly journal published by the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA), a learned society. See also * Middle East Research and Information Project * Association for t ...

'', where she advanced conducting analytical and comparative research, with an international and cross-disciplinary approach. She bemoaned the overspecialization within the field, the neglect of attention to humanities/arts and, uninteresting writing, and linked these problems to Middle East studies as a whole, because researchers were "still a long way from being pathfinders in the world of scholarship generally."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fawaz, Leila 20th-century Lebanese historians Living people American University of Beirut alumni Harvard University alumni Year of birth missing (living people) Women historians Tufts University faculty Academic journal editors Chevaliers of the Légion d'honneur 21st-century Lebanese historians