Sultan Barakat is a Distinguished Professor in Public Policy at Qatar Foundation’s Hamad Bin
Khalifa University, Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Johannesburg and a
Senior Associate Academic at the University of Geneva. He is also a Senior Associate Fellow of
the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), London.
Barakat is a world-renowned scholar, known for pioneering the study of war-torn societies and
their recovery. Professor Barakat founded the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies at
the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies and directed it between 2016 and 2022. Previously, he
served as the 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
2019. Professor Barakat designed and launched York’s very successful Master programmes in
Post-war Recovery Studies, and International Humanitarian Affairs (Online). In 2016 he founded
the MSc Program in Conflict Management and Humanitarian Action at the Doha Institute for
Graduate Studies in Qatar.
Barakat has been published widely – his most recent book, Russia’s Approach to Post-Conflict
Reconstruction was published by Palgrave Macmillan in December 2023.
Barakat has over 30 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,
peace negotiation and programming initiatives in Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia,
Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kosovo, Lebanon, Libya, Nepal, Palestine, Philippines (Mindanao),
Rwanda, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan (Darfur), Syria, Turkey, 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 Fellow of the Economists for Peace and
Security and 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 serves as a commissioner on The Lancet-American University of
Beirut Commission on Syria. He is a member of the Advisory Board for the Geneva-based
Principles for Peace Foundation. Barakat was one of the founding Expert Panel Members of
the Global Peace Index where he served between 2008 and 2014.
Most recently, Barakat has co-led Track I and Track II mediation efforts in Yemen, Syria and
Afghanistan. He is a regular contributor on peace and conflict affairs to Aljazeera, BBC and
other global media outlets.
