Dr. Ahmad Sukkar, a British Syrian academic and architect, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Architectural Engineering (College of Engineering) and the Department of Applied Design (College of Fine Arts and Design), University of Sharjah. He was an Aga Khan Fellow at MIT, an Imam Bukhari Fellow at the University of Oxford, a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Cambridge, a Mellon Fellow at the American University of Beirut, a Fellow at the German Orient-Institut Beirut, an Overseas Research Fellow at Damascus University, and a Middle East Studies Association of North America’s Global Academy Scholar. He completed a Ph.D. and M.Res in architectural humanities and cultural studies at the University of London with a doctoral dissertation shortlisted for the British Association for Islamic Studies’ De Gruyter Prize for the Study of Islam and the Muslim World. He also completed a master’s degree in architecture and urbanism at the Architectural Association and received, with his team, a distinction in his research project, as well as the Far Eastern International Digital Architectural Design Award. He has worked at leading architectural offices in the Middle East and the UK, including Zaha Hadid Architects. His publications appear in several architectural and literary journals, including Buildings, Archives of Design Research, Civil Engineering and Architecture, Open House International, Mawlana Rumi Review (Brill), the International Journal of Islamic Architecture, and al-Adab. He was shortlisted for the Tamayouz’s Mohamed Makiya Prize (Middle Eastern Architectural Personality of the Year 2020). Interviews with him appear in Jadaliyya and Round City.
a.sukkar@sharjah.ac.ae
ahmad.sukkar@aalumni.org
Selected Publications
(2014) ‘ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī of Damascus (d. 1143/1731) and the Mawlawi Sufi Tradition’. Mawlana Rumi Review (Brill), 5: 136–70.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26810335
(2009) ‘Ḍijrit minnī al-Ḥīṭān: Ilā Judrān Fairūz wa Zaha wa Ummī wa Scheherazade’. Al-Adab.
https://al-adab.com/sites/default/files/aladab_2010_v58_09-10_0099_0103.pdf
Selected Public Talks and Interviews
(2021) ‘British-Syrian Academic Ahmad Sukkar Speaks on Architectural Education in the Region’. Round City.
https://round-city.com/interview-british-syrian-academic-ahmad-sukkar-speaks-on-architecture-education-in-the-region/
(2016) ‘The Structure of Divine Light and Human Knowledge’. Wolfson, University of Oxford.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXdCi8K2QUc
