Fadwa El Guindi is currently Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at Qatar University, Doha, Qatar and Head of Department of Social Sciences. Retired Faculty from UCLA, El Guindi has served on the anthropology faculties of University of California at Los Angeles, University of California at Santa Barbara, the University of Southern California and Georgetown University, with her field research ranging from Nubia, to Mexico, to Egypt, to Islam, to Arab and Muslim America, and at present to Khalij (Arab Gulf) society and culture.
She is widely published and lectures internationally. Her expertise on the Middle East was sought at a White House meeting with President Clinton, at the US Senate and by the media. She is elected past president of the Middle East Section and earlier of the Society for Visual Anthropology of the American Anthropological Association. She serves on the Editorial Board of a number of scholarly journals.
Her book, now an anthropological classic in its third printing, titled Veil: Modesty, Privacy and Resistance, has been translated into Indonesian and other languages. Her book, Visual Anthropology: Essential Method and Theory, published 2204, is, according to Asen Balkci “innovative methodology, new paradigm, a must for all anthropology courses”, which in Marcelo Fiorini’s words is “an innovative book, the first unified view of visual anthropology, which theoretically and methodologically breaks traditional boundaries”. Her most recent book (2008) By Noon Prayer: The Rhythm of Islam is a “groundbreaking anthropological analysis of Islam as experienced by Muslims” providing an innovative paradigm about the innovation of Islam and its unique and unified rhythm.
She made a number of visual ethnographies (films) on Arab/Muslim culture which have received international awards. El Guindi earned her B.A. with Honors in Political Science from the American University in Cairo and her Ph.D. in Anthropology in 1972 from the University of Texas at Austin.
