Ala Al-Hamarneh holds a PhD degree in Social and Economic Geography from the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kiev (1994). He joined the project ‘Relations in the Ideoscape: Middle Eastern Students in the Eastern Bloc’ in 2019 as Research Coordinator and is responsible for the yearly report of the overall project “Knowledge without Borders” to the BMBF. His research focuses on the Soviet/Russian Alumni Associations in the Arab world and the Jordanian students in the former USSR.
During his 20 years of affiliation with the University of Mainz as assistant professor he taught courses in human geography with regional focus on the Arab World, Germany, Emilia Romagna/Italy and the USA-Northeastern metropoles. He was senior researcher at the Center for Research on the Arab World (CERAW). He was a visiting professor for sociology at the University of Sharjah/UAE teaching classes on “Modern Arab Society” and “Emirati Society”. Ala has published on migration, tourism, globalization of higher education, neoliberal urban development and Arab culture production. His last publications include the co-edited volumes “Neoliberale Urbanisierung” (2019, transcript) and “International Tourism Development and the Gulf Cooperation Council States” (2017, Routledge).