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Sultan Barakat
Professor

​​​Sultan Barakat is the Founding Director of the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies and a professor in politics and post-war recovery studies at the University of York.  Previously he served as Director of Research at the Brookings Doha Centre. At the University of York he founded and led the Post-war Reconstruction and Development Unit​ between 1993 and 2014.​ From September 2016 he will direct the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies at the DI. 

Barakat has been published widely, his most recent book, Understanding Influence: The Use of Statebuilding Research in British Policy was published by Ashgate in 2014.

Barakat has over 25 years of professional experience working on issues of conflict management, humanitarian response, and post-conflict recovery and transition. He is regularly engaged in providing guidance as a Senior Adviser and Consultant to the United Nations, the World Bank, European Union, DFID, ILO, IFRC and a variety of governments and international non-governmental organizations including CARE and Oxfam.  He has led major evaluations and programming initiatives in Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Egypt, Jordan, Kosovo, Lebanon, Palestine, Philippines (Mindanao), Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan (Darfur), Syria, Uganda (Moyo and Adjumani) and Yemen.

Professor Barakat serves on the Advisory Board of the Humanitarian Policy Group at the Overseas Development Institute in London. He is a member of the joint Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the UK's Department for International Development (DFID) Commissioning Panel for research on poverty reduction. Barakat was one of the founding Expert Panel Members of the Global Peace Index where he served between 2008 and 2014. 


Education: 

PhD and MA, University of York;  BSc, University of Jordan​ 


Languages: 

Arabic, English​


​Research Interests

Professor Barakat's research focus includes strategic conflict assessment and the linkage of context to policy; the research-policy nexus; post-conflict reconstruction and state-building; humanitarian response; conflict mediation; as well as impact evaluation and value attribution. Underlying these themes is a principal research concern with public engagement in reconstruction. 

As the Principle Investigator, Professor Barakat is the recipient of numerous research grants from ESRC, DFID, EU, World Bank, USIP, UNICEF and UNDP amongst others. Much of his work is collaborative and cross-disciplinary and has had substantial impact on the design and use of strategic conflict and stability assessments of war-affected and fragile states.  Barakat's work has pioneered the use of a reflexive 'participatory learning processes' in war-torn areas.

Current Research

He is currently working on research project that investigates Gulf States Aid Modalities with a special reference to Qatar.

​Coming soon.

Books

(2014) (with Waldman& Varisco) Understanding Influence: The Use of Statebuilding Research in British Policy (London, Ashgate).

(2008) (ed.) Reconstructing Post-Saddam Iraq (New York, Routledge).

(2005) (ed.) After the Conflict: Reconstruction and Development in the Aftermath of War (London, I.B. Tauris)

(2004) (ed.) Reconstructing War-Torn Societies: Afghanistan (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan).


Chapters and Articles

(2014) (with Zyck, S. & Deely, S.) "The Evolution of Stabilization Concepts and Praxis", in Robert Muggah (ed.) Stabilization Operations, Security and Development: States of Fragility, Rutledge

(2013) "Conflict analysis for the twenty-first century", Conflict, Security and Development, Vol. 13, No.3, pp 259-283, with T. Waldman​.

(2011) (with Zyck, S.) "Trends in Gulf State Assistance to Crisis-Affected Contexts", in Held and Ulrichsen (eds.) The Transformation of the Gulf: Politics, Economics and the Global Order, Routledge.

(2010) (with Wardell, G.) "Exploited by whom?: An Alternative Perspective on Humanitarian Assistance to Afghan Women", in Siddiqui (ed.) Islam: Gender and Politics, London, Sage Publications Ltd., Vol. 4

(2009) (with Narrang-Suri, S.) "War, Cities and Planning: Making a case for urban planning in conflict-affected cities", in Grindsted, Piquard, Zammit and Day (eds) Cities and Crises, Copenhagen, Deusto University Press, pp.105-129.

(2009) "The Failed Promise of Multi-Donor Trust Funds: Aid Financing as an Impediment to Effective State-Building in Post-Conflict Environments", Policy Studies Vol. 30, No. 2, pp. 107-126.

(2007) "Postwar reconstruction and the recovery of cultural heritage: critical lessons from the last fifteen years", in Stanley-Price (ed.) Cultural Heritage in Postwar Recovery, Rome, ICCROM, pp. 26-39.

Barakat, S., Milton, S. & ElKahlout, G (2020). The impact of the Gulf crisis on Qatar's

humanitarian sector, Disasters, Volume 44, Issue 1. (Scopus Listed).

Barakat, S., Milton, S. & ElKahlout, G (2020). Reconstruction under Siege: the Gaza Strip since

2007, Disasters, Volume 44, Issue 2. (Scopus Listed).

An advanced copy of this article has been included in a special Virtual Issue to celebrate World

Humanitarian Day 2019. This special issue was made free to access and included 6 articles

selected by the editors from the journals Disasters and Development Policy Review.

Barakat, Milton, S. & Elkahlout, G. The Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism: Old Wine in New

Bottlenecks. The Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, Volume 12, Issue 2, pp. 208-227,

2018. (Scopus Listed).

Barakat, S. & Elkahlout, G. Lessons Learned from Post-Conflict Recovery: Towards the

Unification of Arab Efforts. Siyasat Arabia, Issue 30, January 2018, 24-39, 2018. (in Arabic).

= Barakat, S and Waldman, T. 'Cumulative Influence: The Case of Political Settlements

Research in British Policy'. Policy Studies, Volume 38, Issue 6, pp. 640-663., 2017. (Scopus

Listed).

Barakat, S and Milton, S. 'Higher Education as the Catalyst of Recovery in Conflict-Affected

Societies' in Globalisation, Societies and Education, Volume 14, Issue 3, pp. 403-421, 2016.

(Scopus Listed).

Barakat, S. 'A Collaborative Regional Reconstruction Strategy in the Arab World', in Imad K.

Harb, Zeina Azzam (eds.), The Arab Centre, Washington D.C., (2019), pp.87-96, 2019.

(forthcoming) (with S. Milton) 'Qatar as an Emerging Power in Post-Conflict Reconstruction

and Conflict Mediation', in Paczynska (ed.) Emerging Powers and Post-Conflict

Reconstruction. Cambridge University Press.

Steven A. Zyck, Sultan Barakat and Seán Deely 'The evolution of stabilization concepts and

praxis' in Robert Muggah (Ed.) Stabilization Operations, Security and Development: States of

Fragility, London: Routleldge (2013). (Scopus Listed).


Policy Papers

(2015) (with Mark Evans) Defining the Challenge, Making the Change: A Study of Public Administration Reform in Arab Transitions, United Nations Development Program, New York.​

(2014) (with John Skelton) The Reconstruction of Post-war Kuwait: A Missed Opportunity?, Research Paper – Kuwait Programme on Development, Governance and Globalisation in the Gulf States, LSE

(2012) The Qatari Spring: Qatar's Emerging Role in Peacemaking, Research Paper – Kuwait Programme on Development, Governance and Globalisation in the Gulf States, LSE. ​​

Tel: +974 40356962

Mail Address

Sultan Barakat

Doha Institute for Gradute Studies 

School of Social Sciences and Humanities 

P.O.Box: 200592 

Doha, Qatar 
Doha Institute for Graduate Studies | All rights reserved, 2020