Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar (SFS-Q) faculty member Dr Ayman Shabana has received an excellence award in recognition of his research on Islamic bioethics.
The $100,000 award was given to Shabana for the best arts, behavioral and social sciences, humanities and Islamic studies research programme of the year during a ceremony of Qatar Foundation’s annual research forum.
Dr Shabana, visiting assistant professor and research director of the Islamic Bioethics Project at SFS-Q, won the prize for his presentation titled “Sustaining Islamic Bioethics Research.”
The presentation highlighted the main features of the Islamic bioethics research project that he has led at SFS-Q for more than two years.
“I am incredibly proud of Dr Shabana and his research at Georgetown SFS-Q. Research excellence is one of our core aims at Georgetown and this recognition by QNRF proves that we are conducting world-class work that is providing real, meaningful contributions for our society, in Qatar, the region and the world at large,” said dean Gerd Nonneman.
Commenting on receiving the award, Dr Shabana noted: “The project has been a wonderful collaborative effort and this award recognises all the hard work and dedication of the team members. This is definitely a great honour and responsibility and we are determined to exert our best effort to sustain this exciting venture and accomplish its goals.”
The project began with a three-year grant proposal (2009-12), entitled Islamic Medical and Scientific Ethics (IMSE), which was submitted to the National Priorities Research Programme (NPRP) of Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF) by Doris Goldstein (PI), former director of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics (KIE) Library at Georgetown University’s main campus, and Frieda Wiebe (Co-PI), director of the SFS-Q Library.
This proposal aimed to expand the scope of the reputable KIE Library collection of bioethics resources to include Islamic bioethical resources.
Dr Shabana’s presentation at this year’s Annual Research Forum focused on the gradual transformation of the original proposal and its expansion to include various scholarly activities and initiatives in addition to its main bibliographic focus.
Some of the important achievements of this project include development of a comprehensive physical collection of Islamic bioethics resources and a database of bibliographic citations of these resources, facilitating various collaborative research initiatives with interested stakeholders, facilitating the production of several scholarly publications on Islamic bioethics that have either appeared or scheduled to appear in important academic journals, and raising awareness about Muslim contributions and perspectives on bioethical debates through presentations at local, regional, and international conferences and meetings.
These efforts culminated in the successful organisation of an international conference on Islamic bioethics that was held at SFS-Q in June, which brought together some of the important researchers both in the West and in the Muslim world.