Cathia Jenainati

Dr. Cathia Jenainati was appointed Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences in September 2019.

She hails from the University of Warwick in the UK where she has been a full professor and the founding head of the School for Cross-Faculty Studies. In 2015, she founded the Global Sustainable Development Department, which offered 11 unique degree courses designed around a problem-based/solutions-focused approach, and the Institute for Global Sustainable Development at Warwick, a research center with the mission of being a hub for trans-disciplinary research on global sustainable development.

Prior to this role, she was seconded to the President’s Office and was responsible for establishing international projects, based in Europe, the Middle East, North America and South East Asia, focusing on pedagogic innovation and facilitating interdisciplinary research.

In addition, she directed the Academic Writing Programme that was expanded and re-designed under her leadership, resulting in unprecedented uptake of academic writing courses from the student body. She also launched the Liberal Arts degree course structured around the most pressing global issues and “Big Questions” that challenge students to engage with imperfect, wicked problems.

Her research focuses on women’s activism, oral history, the global sustainable development agenda, and the history of education missions in the Middle East. In addition, she has been recognized as a leader in innovative pedagogies especially around Liberal Education, and this has manifested in research grants that have enabled her to publish influential policy and pedagogical intervention papers. She is the recipient of two Teaching Excellence Awards and the Butterworth Memorial Award for Teaching Excellence. She was selected to be one of the Founding Fellows of the Warwick International Higher Education Academy, and still serves it in an honorary capacity.

She is chair of the UK’s Interdisciplinary Group and chair of the International Advisory Board of Amsterdam University College. She holds appointments as external examiner at Imperial College (London), Queen’s University (Belfast) and Bristol University.

Dr. Jenainati’s own academic background is itself interdisciplinary, having earned undergraduate degrees in Biology and English Literature from LAU, in addition to an M.A. in English Literature from the American University in Beirut (AUB) and a PhD in Comparative Literary Studies from the University of Warwick.