Prof. (Dr.) Abdul Fattah Ammourah

Prof. (Dr.) Ammourah is a Professor, Vice Dean and Director, Centre for Middle East Studies (CMES) in the Jindal School of International Affairs. He holds a doctorate (Ph.D.) in linguistics and translation of political discourse: The Arabic-English context from Jawaharlal Nehru University and a Master of Arts in linguistics and translation from Bath University, UK and a certificate in diplomacy and international relations, international politics, international trade and finance and international law from Oxford University, Queen Elizabeth house. He also has a B.A in English language and literature from Damascus University.

Professor Ammourah Served as a career diplomat at the Ministry of Foreign affairs in the Syrian Arab Republic for more than 33 years as a diplomat including charge d’ affairs of the Syrian Embassy in Cyprus, India and Ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of the Syrian Arab Republic to the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan.

Professor Ammourah held the position of deputy to the Syrian foreign minister from 2007-2013, when he retired. During his high level post as director of the economic and cultural departments at the Ministry for foreign affairs as well as the department of Western Europe, he was in charge of conducting a day to day development of the relations and in charge of drafting and negotiating all the agreements signed between Syria and the countries of his area of mandate.

In his capacity as a deputy to the foreign minister, he was in charge of the political, economic and cultural relations between Syria and 48 countries in Europe including the Euro-Mediterranean partnership association and the union for the Mediterranean. He was also a coordinator at the Syrian ministry of foreign affairs of the high level Syrian-Turkish strategic cooperation council and the high level Arab-Turkish strategic cooperation council, as well as a coordinator of all the mutual cooperation committees between Syria and the countries mentioned above.

Professor Ammourah attended a number of regional and international conferences on political, economic and diplomatic matters representing the Syrian Side to those conferences. From 1972-1980, he worked as a lecturer at Damascus and Homs university where he taught linguistics, grammar, English poetry and translation. During that period he also worked as a simultaneous interpreter at more than 120 local, regional and international Seminars, workshops and conferences on various topics. He was also an interpreter at high level meetings.

Professor Ammourah wrote more than 40 articles in the local newspapers and magazines on the current events in West Asia. He is also the author of 4 books titled: “The Middle East and the language of politics and media: approaches to analysis and translation” dealing with the following topics: Book 1: Deals with the conflict between Lebanon and Israel. Book 2: Deals with the peace negotiations. Book 3: Deals with the Mediterranean between struggle and cooperation. Book 4: Deals with a guide to political analysts.

In addition to this, Professor Ammourah translated to Al Farqad publishing house a number of books from English into Arabic titled: (1)- Diplomatic Handbook , (2)-The gardens of democracy, (3)- The Arab Spring: Libyan winter, (4)- Why leaders lie: the truth behind lying in international politics, (5)- “Political discourse analysis” by Norman and Ezabella Fairclough, (6)- He translated his book into English titled: “The Mediterranean between struggle and cooperation” which deals with history of the Arab European political, economic and cultural relations.

Professor Ammourah’s areas of specialization and interests include: diplomacy, international relations, speaking in public, foreign policy analysis, art of negotiation, armed conflict and crisis management, scrutinizing the sensitivity of accurate analysis of the structure of the language of agreements and international originations’ resolutions, as well as the role of mass media in shaping culture, ideology and the techniques of deception and misleading of the public opinion. Finally, he has a keen interest in the sensitivity of the proper translating of political discourse resulting from variations of cultural, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic features of both English and Arabic.