University of Kufa

Established in 1987 though several of its colleges started about twenty years earlier. Today, University of Kufa is the house of 19 colleges, 74 departments with 1701 instructors, 1322 technicians and 1303 employees. It serves about 20,000 students. Recently the University of Kufa hosted the "UNESCO chair for interreligious dialogue studies in the Islamic world" (UniTwin). This program aims at producing multi-disciplinary academic knowledge on aspects of Sunni-Shi’i relations and to contribute original research to the study of non-Muslims in Muslim majority society. In 2015 academic staff from the UOK took part the activities of Turkish leaded project EURAS. The College of Archaeology was founded in 2011-2012. It started with two major departments: Ancient archaeology & Islamic archaeology. It awards BA degree following four years of education, serving about 350 students. The University of Kufa (UOK) will participate in all planned activities of the project, including local and context analysis, quality control, promotion and dissemination activities. 

For more info see the University of Kufa website http://arch.uokufa.edu.iq/en/

Hayder Kareem Al Hamdany is Lecturer at the Faculty of Education at University of Kufa and is also acting as the Head of the Department of Scholarships and Cultural Relations at the same University. He is currently also freelance interpreter and translator (English/Arabic or vice versa) for several private and government agencies, such as Australian Defence Force, Department of Human Services (DHS). In addition, after having being completed his PhD in Applied Linguistics at the University of Adelaide, Prof. Al Hamdany started his second PhD in Sociology at the University of South Australia. He is member of the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) and of the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters (NAATI). He is author of several university syllabi and more than 10 scientific publications in international journals. 

Alaa Hussein Jasim Al Lami is Dean of the Faculty of Archeology, University of Kufa. He holds a PhD in Islamic Archeology from the University of Baghdad in 2016. From 2001 to 2016 he worked at the Ministry of Culture, the General Authority for Antiquities and Heritage. He published extensively in the field of Islamic archeology. Since 2001 he attended many training courses in the field of archaeology, including a training course in the management of international museums in the United States of America, the University of Chicago, a training course from the Jamaica Organization, a training course from the German Archaeology Institute, and a training course in Italy at the University of Bologna in the frame of the Waladu project.