Board of Directors and General Assembly
Board of Directors
Mohamed Ikoubaân – Chairman of the Board
Mohamed Ikoubaân is the founder and director of the Moussem Nomadic Arts Centre in Brussels. His responsibilities include creating a programme of collaborative activities and research projects for artists and partners.
Mary Ann DeVlieg –Deputy Chair
Mary Ann DeVlieg is an independent consultant with a PhD researching policies and practices concerning artists impacted by displacement. She has been a case worker for persecuted artists since 2009. She works closely with the Council of Europe on artistic freedom initiatives, is a frequent speaker and moderator, evaluates grants applications and projects, curates trainings and conferences, including the annual Safe Havens conference. She founded the EU working group, Arts-Rights-Justice; and was a co-founder of the Arts-Rights-Justice Academy, University of Hildesheim. A former Secretary General of IETM (1994-2013), an international network for contemporary performing arts, she founded/co-founded www.on-the-move.org the International mobility network that reinforces cultural mobility as fairer, more diverse, and more sustainable. and the Roberto Cimetta Fund for Mobility in the Mediterranean.
Lies Lauwers – Member
Lies is a Belgian-British Arabist who lived and worked in Syria, Libya, Jordan and Lebanon, as well as Belgium and England. Her professional career has included a wide variety of roles, across the voluntary, private and government sectors, but with a recurrent focus on delivering through partners for the more vulnerable. Lies started her professional life as a diplomat in Libya. In London, and subsequently in Jordan and Brussels, she worked for BBC Media Action focusing on the Middle East. She supported UNRWA’s Director for Education in Jordan and worked with UNESCO in Lebanon. She currently leads Partnerships at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) in Brighton, UK.
Kinan Azmeh – Member
Hailed as a “virtuoso, intensely soulful" by the New York Times and "spellbinding" by the New Yorker. Syrian-born, Brooklyn-based genre-bending composer, clarinettist and improviser Kinan Azmeh has been touring the globe with great acclaim. He has collaborated with Yo-Yo Ma, Daniel Barenboim, John McLaughlin, and The New York Philharmonic among others.
Kinan is the winner of Germany’s OpusKlassik Award in 2019 for his solo album Uneven Sky and was featured on the Grammy-winning album Sing Me Home by the Silkroad Ensemble in 2017.
He is a graduate of The Juilliard School, the Damascus High Institute of Music, and Damascus University’s School of Electrical Engineering, Kinan holds a doctorate in music from the City University of New York.
His opera, Songs For Days To Come, fully sung in Arabic, was premiered in Germany in June 2022 to great success. Kinan serves on the United States National Council For the Arts.
Hanane Hajj Ali – Member
Hanane Hajj Ali is an actress, researcher, cultural activist and one of the most prominent contemporary figures in the Arab art and culture scene. She began her artistic career in 1978 when she co-founded Al-Hakawati Theatre. She has also taken part in theatre shows at prestigious festivals and renowned locations and has gone on several regional and international tours.
General Assembly
Darius Polok
Darius Polok is the Managing Director at the International Alumni Center. The iac Berlin supports impact-driven networks and coordinates the Bosch Alumni Network, a community of alumni, partners and staff members of the Robert Bosch Stiftung. Until August 2016, Polok was Managing Director of MitOst (mitost.org), a Berlin-based NGO active in the fields of cultural exchange, active citizenship, sustainable urban development and cohesion in Europe and neighbouring regions.
Salam Kawakibi
Salam Kawakibi is the Director of the Paris branch of the Arab Centre for Research and Policy. He is a researcher in political science and international affairs and worked as Deputy Director of the Arab Reform Initiative (ARI) until 2017 where he developed, coordinated and followed up on a number of research projects. Kawakibi holds several graduate degrees in economics, international affairs and political science. He is also an associate researcher in several French and European research centres. He held the position of Director of the Institut Français du Proche Orient (IFPO) in Aleppo from 2000 to 2006.
Alia Malek
Alia Malek is a journalist and former civil rights lawyer. She has authored two books: The Home That Was Our Country: A Memoir of Syria (2017) and A Country Called Amreeka: U.S History Re-Told Through Arab American Lives (2009). She also served as editor of “Patriot Acts: Narratives of Post 9/11 Injustices” and has collaborated with the Magnum Foundation in the US and the Spanish cultural organization Al-liquindoi on editing and co-designing the book EUROPA أوروپا: An Illustrated Introduction to Europe for Migrants and Refugees which was published in 2016 and distributed free of charge.
Rana Yazaji
Rana Yazaji has managed several projects, programmes and organizations in the cultural field in the Arab world. In 2011, she collaborated with other independent cultural activists to establish Ettijahat – Independent Culture. Between 2014 and 2017, Yazaji held the position of Executive Director of Culture Resource (Al Mawred Al Thaqafy), a regional cultural organization focused on developing and supporting the independent art scene and cultural actors in the Arab world. Beyond her work in cultural management, Yazaji is engaged in research on cultural policies, with many of her studies and works published widely in various Syrian and Arab newspapers.
Liwaa Yazji
Liwaa Yazji is a filmmaker, poet, playwright, screenwriter and translator. She published her first play Here in the Park in 2012, her poetry book In Peace, we leave Home in 2014, and her translation of Edward Bond’s Saved into Arabic in 2014. She worked as a script doctor for several production companies and wrote the script for the series The Brothers which has been broadcasted on several Arab channels since 2014.
Her first documentary Haunted, released in 2014, premiered at FID Marseilles where it got the Special Mention in the First Film Competition and has since been commissioned for other festivals and screenings. It also recently received the Al-Waha Bronze award at GIGAF festival, Tunis. Yazji was selected to sit as a jury member for the feature documentary competition at the 2016 Freistadt International Film Festival. She is now co-writing HEIM, a TV series produced in Germany.
Nizar Saghieh
Nizar Saghieh is a Lebanese lawyer and researcher who co-founded the Legal Agenda and has been its executive director since 2011. He is also a member of the editorial team of The Legal Agenda in Lebanon and Tunisia. Nizar is a pioneer of the use of strategic litigation in Lebanon to advocate and defend causes related to civil, economic, and social rights and liberties. He is also a pioneer of social policymaking, especially in relation to judicial independence, public property, the environment, marginalized groups, and public and union freedoms. Saghieh has published research and helped draft bills on topics including judicial independence, the disappeared of the Lebanese civil war, drug abuse, harassment inside and outside the workplace and workers’ rights.
