Omneya AYAD, Ph.D

Right after she earned her bachelor degree in Journalism and Mass Communications from the American University in Cairo, she started pursuing a bachelor degree in Islamic studies in the Sufi Academy of Arabic and Islamic Studies – a college affiliated with Al Azhar University. During these four years of intensive studying of classical Arabic and Islamic texts, she was exposed to the vast intellectual heritage of various Islamic sciences and Sufism in particular. Also she had attended in the Azhar mosque a series of lectures and circles of knowledge conducted by eminent scholars in the field of Islamic studies which allowed her to expand her intellect and fueled her passion to pursue postgraduate studies in this field. After earning her Master’s degree on “The Contemporary Sufi Heritage of Shaykh Ahmed Ibn Mustafa al-‘Alawī and His Elements of the Sufi Path towards the Divine” from the American University in Cairo, she had pursued a doctoral degree in  the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter, UK where she finished her doctoral thesis on “Ibn ‘Ajība (d. 1224/1809) and His Oceanic Exegesis of the Quran: Love in the Moroccan Sufi Tradition”. During her postgraduate studies she has worked as a teaching assistant of Islamic history while pursuing her Master’s degree in the American University in Cairo and during her doctoral studies she spent two years teaching the Arabic language in the University of Exeter.