Mai Yamani

Yamani was born in Cairo, Egypt, in 1956 to an Iraqi mother from Mosul and a Saudi Arabian father from Mecca. Her paternal grandfathers came from Yemen, hence the surname Yamani ("from Yemen"). Her early education included schooling in Baghdad, Iraq and Mecca, Saudi Arabia.[1] She attended secondary school at the renowned Château Mont-Choisi in Lausanne, Switzerland, from 1967 to 1975. She received her bachelor's degree summa cum laude (with highest honors) from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania; and subsequently attended Somerville College, University of Oxford, where she was the first Yemeni woman to obtain a M.St. and a D.Phil. from Oxford, in social anthropology.[1]

She started her career as a university lecturer in Saudi Arabia, and became a scholar at leading international think tanks in the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East.[2] She has been a research fellow at the Royal Institute for International Affairs in London; a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC; and a visiting scholar at Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. She speaks fluent Arabic, English, French and Spanish, and has a working knowledge of Persian, Hebrew and Italian.

• Changed Identities: The Challenge of the New Generation in Saudi Arabia. Royal Institute of International Affairs. 2000. ISBN 978-1-86203-088-6.
• Cradle of Islam: The Hijaz and a Quest for Arabian Identity. I.B.Tauris. 21 August 2009. ISBN 978-0-85773-110-4.

• Official website
• Mai Yamani's commentaries at Project Syndicate